NCBFAA Argues That Capacity Constraints Are Biggest Hurdle to Resiliency

The National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America's president told the U.S. trade representative that customs brokers and others in the trade community aren't "pro forced-labor, pro-pollution, pro-unsustainable environmental practices," but that too often, "‘race to the top’ objectives do not take into consideration the ability to actually implement the policies, and the costs associated with the goals."

A resilient supply chain, in NCBFAA's view, has less to do with social or environmental sustainability and more to do with a lack of capacity, whether that's in chassis, containers, ocean ports or land ports of entry. Those bottlenecks, which led to "exorbitant drayage and demurrage charges (storage fees)," Gonzalez argued, created both shortages and inflation.

"Unfortunately, most recently the catastrophic event with the accident collapsing the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the entryway of the port of Baltimore has once again highlighted areas of insufficient supply chain resilience, including the inflexibility of local port procedures in place to facilitate business resumption," he wrote.

He suggested that public-private tabletop exercises on how to manage disruptions are needed.

"Changing trade policies and procedures when goods are ‘on the water’ is very disruptive to the supply chain, and should be avoided at all costs," he wrote, and gave the example of a ban on Russian imports. He said unions at some ports refused to unload goods, even though the ban didn't apply to goods on the water.

Gonzalez also suggested that rhetoric about friendshoring is not worth much unless there are lower trade barriers for those countries' exporters in the U.S. and vice versa.

The customs brokers said Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act implementation is not working well. "The process surrounding seizures is murky even when the importer can definitively prove there is not forced labor in the shipment," Gonzalez said.

While the brokers' comments were generally contrary to the direction USTR and the administration have gone in trade policy, they do support changing the de minimis threshold so that fewer small packages are entering duty-free. "This segment of trade is outpacing the technology and infrastructure needed to manage it to such an extent it has increased the threat in that small package space, and has posed greater friction for overall trade facilitation," he wrote. "USTR should partner with the legitimate trade community of US importers, licensed customs brokers, and responsible fully integrated express consignment operators to support CBP and overall US trade policy in ‘shrinking the haystack’ of small package trade," he said, which would allow CBP "to focus on the most high-risk packages and shippers."

NCBFAA took the opportunity to ask for ongoing ACE funding, and said it isn't a true paper-free system yet.