U.S. Customs and Border Protection has published revised 'terms and conditions' that must be followed as a condition for access to the Automated Commercial Environment Secure Data Portal (ACE Portal) effective immediately.
Automated Commercial Environment (ACE)
The Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) is the CBP's electronic system through which the international trade community reports imports and exports to and from the U.S. and the government determines admissibility.
In March 2007, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an ABI administrative message announcing that in the future, CBP will be expanding the Automated Commercial Environment in-bond capabilities for e-Manifest: Truck participants that use the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) option.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI administrative message announcing that the new Automated Commercial Environment reports tool has been temporarily disabled.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a notice announcing that the fifth group of land border ports to become mandatory for the Automated Commercial Environment electronic manifest: Truck for advance cargo information purposes will be those in Idaho and Montana effective August 6, 2007.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an ABI administrative message which states that for some time it has been encouraging participants in Automated Commercial Environment e-Manifest: Truck to use legitimate CBP Form 7512 numbers with check digits or paperless in-bond numbers ('V' numbers with check digits) instead of shipment control numbers (bill of lading numbers) for in-bond movements, in order to avoid certain internal processing problems.
The following are documents which CBP updates frequently (weekly, monthly, etc.). Updates are listed under "What's New" on its Web site:
In January 2007, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an electronic notice which announced the phased enforcement of mandatory Automated Commercial Environment electronic manifest: Truck (e-Manifest: Truck) for advance cargo information purposes at all land border ports in Washington and Arizona as well as the ports of Pembina, Neche, Walhalla, Maida, Hannah, Sarles and Hansboro, North Dakota.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a document entitled "ACE Workplan Schedule" which provides a month-by-month (April 2007-October 2007) list of the changes and/or fixes to the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) that have been scheduled for deployment. According to CBP, its list contains only those changes and/or fixes that impact the trade community.
CBP has posted to its Web site a list of upcoming "Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) on the Road" events, as follows:
For over six years, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has provided import data for a specific time period to companies who submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Office of Strategic Trade (OST). This collection of data is called Importer Trade Activity (ITRAC) and is comprised of about 20 elements of company-specific import data. CBP states that the information is only provided to the Importer of Record or those authorized by the Importer of Record to submit the FOIA request on its behalf. 1