Alba At WESCCON: What We Heard
Alba Wheels Up sent a five-person strong delegation to WESCCON, a logistics trade industry conference focused on what is happening and impacting ports of entry along the US West Coast. Hearing from the Federal Maritime Commission, Customs and Border Protection and executives from each of the major seaports was informative and gave us insight into market conditions and forthcoming regulatory changes.
With that said, there were three things that we took away as being most notable and interesting and want to share them with our audience today.
Forced Labor Is A Top Priority
From the opening keynote delivered by the executive director of Washington-based Free the Slaves or through the trade attorney panels and even from Executive Assistant Commissioner Pete Flores, forced labor is an item of pressure from Congress and consumers, and a key enforcement priority for Cusotms and Border Protection.
Whether because of Withhold Release Orders or the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, an estimated 13 million square feet of Foreign Trade Zone space in Southern California holds merchandise that importers must prove to the government were not made with, or sourced from, forced labor.
With it being more difficult for NGOs to operate in China to perform validations, science is filling a gap, utilizing mathematical formulae and trace elements to determine the precise origin of components based on their scientific signatures. A presenter from a company called Floratrace showed how products can be traced and this evidence presented to CBP to bolster an importer’s case for why a good should not be held.
CBP Is Modernizing Their Regulations
While it will most directly impact customs brokers who are licensed by the agency, the forthcoming changes to how brokers are regulated, the information the agency collects and what they do with it will be front and center for cargo owners’ supply chains.
The 21st Century Customs Framework, or 21CCF as it is known, will change how CBP receives and handles data and what they can do with it. These changes are the first in nearly 30 years which came into law when NAFTA was passed in 1993 – and even NAFTA has been succeeded by the USMCA in that time.
The agency wants to be able to receive more and varying types of data from actors both traditional and “non-traditional” – such as e-commerce marketplaces – to ensure compliance with laws and protect American consumers.
This will be an evolving area and Alba will share changes that directly impact our importers.
AD/CVD Remains An Area Of Exposure
Antidumping and countervailing duties are one area that are designed to protect domestic industry and the laws and procedures surrounding them are significantly tilted in its favor. As a result, importers can be subject to bills for additional duty years after goods have been delivered and sold with little to no recourse.
A panel of trade attorneys discussed the challenges of scope rulings with the Department of Commerce, how finding and utilizing those rulings are significantly different than a tariff classification ruling, and what happens when an overseas respondent in an antidumping case doesn’t answer Commerce in a timely fashion and loses what may be a lower duty that is specific to them, and then has their exporters thrown into a country-wide rate much higher and must remain there for upwards of a year while a new application is filed.
How Alba Can Help
At Alba Wheels Up, we work with ports of entry, Centers for Excellence and Expertise and an alphabet soup of agencies with jurisdiction across a wide variety of commodities. We have internal subject matter experts focused on food, e-Commerce, fashion, apparel and more, remaining focused and bringing the latest news to plan and make smart commercial decisions. To learn more about how Alba can help your company, contact us today.
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