Monday Morning eBriefing

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on April 13 issued an update to the trade regarding the deployment of the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) Phase 1 on April 20. CAPE is a new ACE functionality that will streamline and consolidate refunds and interest payments for entries subject to the IEEPA duties, rather than issuing entry-by-entry refunds.

On behalf of NCBFAA's Board of Directors, Leadership and Staff, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and welcome 3D Forwarding, Global International, Hunter International Brokerage Services, Madhu Pandey, and Top Shopping Systems Corp., which have recently joined our association. We're so excited to have these firms join our organization and we are happy to assist in any way we can!

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on April 20 will launch the first phase of the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) tool in the ACE Secure Data Portal. “CAPE will simplify International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) duty refund requests made pursuant to court order and in accordance with appropriate statutory authority by providing an electronic pathway to submit valid IEEPA duty refund claims,” CBP said.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) hosted a virtual webinar on April 8 which highlighted the three-month mark to the full implementation date of eFiling for most regulated products. The July 8 eFiling deadline is real. It will not be delayed. If you and your clients are not ready, now is the time to pay attention.

Atmus Filtration voluntarily dismissed its case on April 6. The notice of dismissal does not specify why Atmus has dismissed its case. NCBFAA Customs Counsel and Legislative Adivsor of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, P.A., provide an analysis of the action taken by the Court of International Trade (CIT) in response to the case's dismissal and ongoing the work by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to prepare for IEEPA tariff refunds.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the next step in its efforts to implement the President's Executive Orders to achieve American drone dominance. In an April 1 Notice, the FCC is requesting public comment on actions to advance the production, deployment, and export of American unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), or drones.

Although our industry-leading 2026 NCBFAA Annual Conference at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa in San Antonio, Texas, on April 12-15, 2026, has sold out, we want to take this moment to thank our generous sponsors who help make this event a success.

On behalf of NCBFAA's Board of Directors, Leadership and Staff, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and welcome EWI, Inc., which has recently joined our association. We're so excited to have this firm join our organization and we are happy to assist in any way we can! In addition, NCBFAA would like to highlight the new corporate name for Regular Member Logwin Logistics US Inc., of Long Beach, California.

The NCBFAA Customs Committee has received clarification from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regarding the reporting of no metal content for the purposes of the new Section 232 steel, aluminum, and copper derivatives.

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

A summary of the latest legislative and regulatory transport, logistics and trade sector updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Transportation Counsel firm Venable.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told the trade that Harmonized System Update (HSU) 2607 was created on April 5 and contains 116 harmonized tariff records and 519 Automated Broker Interface (ABI) records.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) notified the trade on April 6 that the Electronic Export Manifest (EEM) will be implementing an update to the Appendix U list to allow three HTS Codes for Used Vehicles.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Friday evening, April 3, released guidance to the trade regarding the implementation of the April 2 Proclamation, “Strengthening Actions Taken to Adjust Imports of Aluminum, Steel, and Copper into the United States.” NCBFAA has provided CBP’s guidance in full below for the convenience of our customs broker members.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Implementation Guide (IG) can now be found in the “Implementation Guidelines: Ready for Coding” section of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website. The DEA message set was deployed to CBP’s ACE Production Environment on March 21, 2026. The new DE3 flag is being enforced with a WARNING severity.

Effective Feb. 6, 2026, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began issuing all refunds electronically via Automated Clearing House (ACH) (subject to limited exceptions), as announced in the Electronic Refunds Interim Final Rule published Jan. 2, 2026 in the Federal Register. This requires trade members to set up ACE Portal accounts and to submit ACH banking information so that CBP can issue ACH refunds instead of mailing refunds as U.S. Treasury checks. Importers without a U.S. bank account must either open a U.S. bank account or designate your customs broker with a U.S. bank account consistent with 31 U.S.C. 3332(g).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) highlighted the agency's expanded import inspection efforts during a widely publicized event at the Port of New York/Newark, promising vigorous enforcement of imported products. Importers can avoid costly and disruptive enforcement actions by reviewing the regulatory status of their products, the compliance of their supply chain partners, and by filing required import notices.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) om April 3 published an updated version of the Automated Transmission of Container Seal Changes to ACE Manifest Trade Information Notice. The updated notice includes an additional feature to be deployed to ACE production (PROD) environment to notify trade users when CBP personnel add or remove a container for ocean and rail shipments.

This analysis regarding Customs and Border Protection’s latest update system update on March 31 to the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) is provided by NCBFAA Customs Counsel and Legislative Advisor of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, P.A., and it reviews some key points about what Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) “Phase 1” will and won’t be doing.

President Trump on April 2 signed proclamation which adjusts the steel, aluminum, and copper Section 232 tariffs, as well as an executive order for pharmaceutical import tariffs. Specifically, the proclamation “defines the way that tariffs are assessed, ensuring that they reflect the full value of imported steel, aluminum, and copper products—not an artificially low foreign price,” while in his executive order, President Trump said he under Section 232 that his administration will impose a 100% tariff on patented pharmaceutical products and ingredients. The tariffs will take effect in 120 days for certain large companies, and 180 days for smaller companies.