Monday Morning eBriefing

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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:

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) delayed implementation of an interim final rule establishing new controls on certain cybersecurity items for National Security (NS) and Anti-terrorism (AT) reasons, along with a new License Exception, Authorized Cybersecurity Exports (ACE) until March 7. The agency originally planned to implement the rule on Jan. 19.

The Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Division on Jan. 3 released its 2022 Automated Export System (AES) Concordance (Commodity Classification Files) for available use.

The Census Bureau on April 23, 2021, issued guidance to the trade on the requirement for reporting Electronic Export Information (EEI) to the Automated Export System (AES) for aircraft being exported from the U.S.

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.

New requirements from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for bulk hydrofluorocarbon imports took effect Jan. 1. The final rule requires importers of bulk HFC products to have a “consumption” allowance.

It was one year ago this week that the Customs Business Fairness Act (CBFA) was included in the December 2020 stimulus package. This gave customs brokers much needed relief from the 90-day claw back when an importer files bankruptcy.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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

NCBFAA is gathering data on the total cost for freight movement in the current air cargo environment and needs association members to share their input through this survey, so that we can meet our collective goal to properly inform the Biden administration and our nation’s lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the pain-points in this vital component of the international supply chain.