U.S. Customs and Border Protection is making progress moving import regulatory filings off its old computer processing system to the Automated Commercial Environment.
The transition to the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) for filing customs entries with data for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has gone smoothly and overall usage of the new system continues to gain momentum, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
On June 15, ACE became the mandatory system for filing electronic entries and entry summaries for merchandise subject to FDA import requirements.
CBP is no longer processing FDA forms filed through its legacy Automated Commercial System, which is being phased out. Importers and brokers can still file paper documents at the local Customs house, if they prefer, but will likely experience much slower response times and cargo delays if they do so.
ACE is a massive IT deployment by CBP that the agency is using to track, control and process all international cargo shipments for admissibility, duties, fees, security and compliance with trade regulations. It also is the platform for the International Trade Data System (ITDS), which is designed as a single channel for disseminating electronic forms between traders and other agencies with hold and release authority, or statistical requirements, so that parties can transmit a standard date set to multiple sources, and any agency-specific documents in one transaction. Under an Obama administration executive order, all agencies are supposed to be working in ITDS by end of the year.
CBP has required most types of entry summaries – used to declare the value, classification, rate of duty and other information — to be filed in ACE since the end of March. Shipments subject to review by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service were also included in the March 31 deadline. CBP has said it will require most types of entries, used to determine whether merchandise can be released from CBP custody at the port of entry, to be filed in ACE by the end of May.
As of June 17, more than 95 percent of all cargo imported into the United States was processed electronically in ACE, CBP said Wednesday. That is up from about 75 percent in early May.
“CBP is very pleased with the results of our mandatory ACE transitions to date, including our most recent transition on June 15th. To ensure trade filers were prepared for this transition, CBP and FDA worked closely to conduct a series of trade filing exercises to iron out any FDA filing issues in advance of June 15th,” CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said in a statement.
The next key milestone in the transition to ACE/ITDS is July 23, when filers will be required to file in ACE electronic entries (cargo release) and corresponding entry summaries for the remaining entry types, which covers the transition of quota to ACE. After July 23, filing of entries and their corresponding entry summaries can only be submitted through ACE.
CBP officials say they are working to help other government agencies and the trade community to deliver all core trade processing capabilities by the end of December 2016, as mandated by President Obama in an executive order.
The changeover to ACE hasn’t been without its problems. Read more about the technical challenges of rolling out the new system in the June magazine feature story, “Ghosts in the Machine.“
Mandatory FDA entry filing in ACE goes well so far
