Exporters Still Facing Penalties for Minor EEI Violations, Census Hears

Some exporters are still facing penalties for minor errors made in Automated Export System filings despite efforts by CBP and the Census Bureau to rein in those fines. Omari Wooden, Census’ assistant division chief for trade outreach and regulations, said those penalties, often referred to as “parking ticket violations,” have been an “ongoing issue” with CBP.

“One of the challenges that we have with customs, and unfortunately customs will acknowledge this … is the inconsistencies among each port,” Wooden said Oct. 8 during the Western Cargo Conference. “So that's one of the things that I know from a headquarters perspective they're trying to look at.”

CBP in 2019 said it hoped to eliminate penalties for minor violations of export filing requirements as part of its upcoming electronic export manifest rollout (see 1909240034). The agency last year said it was operating under a new “informed compliance umbrella” approach, whereby it aimed to work with Census and the exporter to try to correct incorrect data before issuing automated penalties. But during Wooden’s WESCCON panel, an industry official said the penalties are “still happening.”

Wooden said the issue may lie with the ports, adding that CBP is hoping to move away from those penalties. “One of the things that we try to do in Census is try to work with customs in those situations to at least either get it mitigated or at least provide some guidance,” he said. CBP didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wooden also said Census is facing challenges creating a new pilot program that could test the elimination of some export reporting requirements for shipments to Puerto Rico (see 2206150033). The agency was considering several pilots, including one that would require exporters to submit Electronic Export Information for shipments to Puerto Rico only once a month instead of on a transaction-by-transaction basis. “But in most cases, a lot of those didn't seem as feasible,” Wooden said. “So the requirement is still in place and we’ll see where we go from there.”

Census earlier this year decided not to eliminate EEI reporting requirements for shipments to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, saying it couldn’t find an alternative data source to replace the information that would no longer have been submitted by exporters (see 2202030016). Wooden said the EEI elimination is “something that we're willing to discuss” and Census is looking into whether it can capture the data from various Census surveys, including its “commodity flow survey” and annual business survey. But he said the agency still hasn’t found a reliable alternative.

“The Puerto Rico requirement, killing it? That's not going to happen,” Wooden said. “There's still a statistical element, it still has a relevance to data that even the government of Puerto Rico is needing.”

Census is also still evaluating whether to move forward with a rule that would require U.S. exporters of foreign-produced goods to declare the country of origin for their item in the Automated Export System (see 2112140033), even though the rule was widely criticized by industry. Wooden said the “biggest feedback” the agency received on the rule was the “increased burden” it would cause traders.

“We're still in the process of evaluating those comments,” he said. “There is a statistical need, because this is information that is captured on the import side. There's a level of symmetry that we are trying to, from a statistical perspective, develop on the export side.”