CBP Should Create 'Standardized' Port Processes for Vehicle Exports, Industry Official Says

CBP should implement a “standardized national process” for vehicle exports across U.S. ports, said Brian Barber, vice president of U.S. brokerage operations and government affairs at Willson International. Barber, speaking this week during CBP’s Trade Facilitation and Cargo Security Summit, said a more streamlined process could help brokers keep track of various vehicle export procedures.

“It is this very polarizing process from port to port to port,” he said. “Right now brokers are tasked with maintaining internal matrices that say ‘for this port, you need X, Y and Z, and here's how you communicate it.’”

He added that there are “no standard email addresses for local ports of entries." CBP should create “trade-facing standardized points of contact,” such as an email address for each port, “whether it's at Buffalo or Detroit or down on a southern border.” He gave an example for a potential email contact for the Port of Laredo: “VehicleExport.Laredo@cbp.dhs.gov.”

“That would just standardize and make things a little bit more simplistic, I think, for the trade,” Barber said. “That way we can get to who we need to on a consistent basis and really kind of take some of the guesswork out.”