Monday Morning eBriefing

On behalf of NCBFAA's Board of Directors, Leadership and Staff, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and welcome the following members who have recently joined our association:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has made available its latest Border Interagency Executive Council (BIEC) Report Card.

In a Jan. 14 letter to USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Administrator Kevin Shea, NCBFAA President Jan Fields expressed the association’s concern about the agency’s decision to return to requiring presentation of paper phytosanitary certificates rather than accepting an uploaded image to the Document Image System (DIS) in ACE. APHIS recently announced that DIS uploads will not be accepted beginning March 31.

The NCBFAA Export Compliance Sub-Committee has recently completed a thorough review of the SLI model and has updated it to reflect certain regulatory changes.

January’s trending topics on Guidance on HR, Business Management and Operational Risk brought to you by Paychex:

Forwarders spend a good deal of energy explaining export compliance responsibilities to the less educated exporters, only to hear that “you are the only forwarder who is asking me for this information.” The association, in response, provides members an NCBFAA branded USPPI Responsibility Information Sheet as a tool that can be forwarded to or handed out to your export customers.

Here is a summary of the latest legislative and regulatory transport, logistics and trade sector updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Transportation Counsel firm Venable:

NCBFAA members have expressed interest in the NEI becoming an IATA-accredited “training school” that offers dangerous goods certification. There is a significant financial and structural investment involved in acquiring IATA accreditation.

The ports of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach continue to postpone their “Container Dwell Fee,” this time until Jan. 17. The fee was previously set to take effect on Monday, Jan. 10.

The NCBFAA Transportation Committee’s Logistics Subcommittee is regularly collecting data on the nation’s rail delays and port congestion that are impacting the supply chain and your business operations.

The O*NET Data Collection Program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, is seeking the input of expert Customs Brokers. As the nation's most comprehensive source of occupational data, O*NET is a public resource for millions of job seekers, employers, veterans, educators, and students at www.onetonline.org.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided an updated document with instructions on communicating electronically with various areas of the agency’s operations during a recent meeting with the Los Angeles Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Association. While parts of the document are specific to the West Coast, most of the contacts and instructions are useful to other parts of the country.

Some of you may occasionally receive questionable electronic communications which are believed to be part of phishing schemes. Always ignore and delete these communications!

NCBFAA plans to hold our 49th Annual Conference on May 1-4 in Tucson, Arizona, in-person, following the lead of other major industry conferences in our industry, and we have a great lineup of activities for you to attend.

Due to the NCBFAA Legislative Committee’s ongoing lobbying on Capitol Hill, the Customs Business Fairness Act (CBFA) (H.R. 4186) has recently gained three new congressional co-sponsors for CBFA, giving us a total of 20.

Here is a summary of the latest customs and cross-border trade regulatory updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Customs Counsel firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg:

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) recently welcomed the swearing in of assistant secretaries Thea D. Rozman Kendler and Matthew S. Axelrod, following their unanimous confirmations by the Senate in mid-December.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Dec. 17 announced its modernization plan for the ACE Secure Data Portal (ACE Portal), which the agency will carry out over several phases during 2022.

The ports of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach continue to postpone their “Container Dwell Fee,” this time until Jan. 10. The fee was previously set to take effect on Monday, Jan. 3.

Here is a summary of the latest legislative and regulatory transport, logistics and trade sector updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Transportation Counsel firm Venable: