The agency plans to submit its recommendations at the Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee meeting on Oct. 3.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is working to submit its recommendations for changes to 19 CFR part 146, the Foreign Trade Zone Regulations, for consideration at the next Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting on Oct. 3 in Washington, D.C., CBP Cargo Security and Controls Director Jim Swanson said on Monday at the annual National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones conference in Atlanta.
CBP said in a Sept. 10-published notice for the meeting that the COAC Foreign Trade Zone Working Group will present recommendations regarding the updating of the regulations and will discuss a proposed revision to 19 CFR part 146 that began in 2015 and was referred to the working group for further input.
Among other things, CBP is looking to rewrite the regulations to accommodate automation and to integrate the foreign-trade zone (FTZ) entry process with the entry regulations spelled out in 19 CFR parts 141 and 142, as current regulatory differences between FTZ and standard entries could cause CBP automated systems to not work, Swanson said.
“We’re trying to get a leaner and meaner regulation that makes a lot more sense for everybody,” he said.
Swanson said in the context of part 146 regulations, CBP is looking at what direct delivery looks like now and what it should look like 10 years from now, noting that regulations should be forward-looking and incorporate language that will expedite trade in a modern trade environment in which data moves fast.
Direct delivery refers to the procedure for delivery of merchandise to an FTZ without prior application and approval on Customs Form 214 (Application for FTZ Admission and/or Status Designation).
“How do we move forward in a [government-industry] partnership way, to identify maybe a better way to move this forward, and how do we handle those data streams going forward?” Swanson asked. “The government is looking at … data collection. As we know, we’re looking at all of the fancy stuff that’s going on in the data world, so there may be options. And we want to be able to adjust to those options, without having to go back and [rewrite] the regs and start all over again.”
In addition to rewriting 19 CFR part 146, CBP is undertaking the second phase of the rollout of Form 214 in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), also known as e214, said Thomas Overacker, executive director for the CBP Office of Field Operations.
“We’re now in phase two, where we’re going to bring PGAs [partner government agencies] on board, get those PGA message sets going into those e214s, to make filing more efficient and more effective,” he said.
CBP deployed e214s in ACE in December.
Swanson said the e214 phase one rollout was fairly successful, with “some hiccups here and there,” mostly on data transfer issues, adding that it didn’t pose major commercial interruptions.
Within about the last week, CBP has heard from five PGAs that they have agreed to basic ground rules regarding their roles in the e214 process, including that they will collect data upon FTZ admission, and nothing further upon entry, Swanson said.
However, other PGAs have domestic regulations associated with substantial transformation, which CBP doesn’t want to meddle with, he said.
“We’re probably not going to be engaged with that,” Swanson said. “We’re still looking at what needs to be done there. There are some outliers.”
Customs writing ‘leaner and meaner’ FTZ rules
