At this writing, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation is still in progress. Initially, the goal was to complete the negotiation by the end of 2017, prior to the Mexican presidential election, but that has been delayed into first quarter of 2018, causing concern. The NAFTA agreement is important not only on its own merits, but it will give a clear indication to the trade community on the current administration’s approach to other pending major trade issues such as the US Korea Free Trade Agreement and trade with China.
The final deployment for the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) is scheduled to be dropped on Feb. 24, 2018, which is now being referred to as CORE ACE. There is still functionality, that existed in the Automated Commercial System (ACS), that was not programmed for in ACE and in order to be completed still requires further congressional funding. The National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) has been actively involved from the beginning of this initiative and continues providing feedback on essential functionality needed for final implementation. Achieving the promised trade facilitation, data collection efficiencies, and streamlined processes, will require further investment and work in 2018.
This year we will see greater enforcement by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on forced labor, intellectual property rights (IPR) and anti-dumping/countervailing duties (AD/CVD) as mandated in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (TFTEA).
TFTEA also increased the de minimis value of goods (where no duties or taxes are payable), from $200 to $800, allowing products to enter into the US commerce from limited data provided on manifest declarations.
CBP will need to mandate data requirements to properly target, utilizing the $4 billion ACE platform, the growing e-commerce market for other government agency requirements, forced labor, IPR, and AD/CVD for potential violations and non-compliance.