The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has formally announced a postponement of Phase 4 enforcement for Canadian trucks under the Trade Act, after hearing from the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) and the American Trucking Associations.
In its push to get more carriers to use the electronic truck manifest component of the Automated Customs Environment (ACE), CBP had planned to step up enforcement of the US Trade Act’s advance cargo requirements February 28, according to the CTA. That would have meant that carriers not participating in the truck manifest component of ACE would have been denied entry to the United States, if required cargo data was not successfully sent to CBP in advance of arrival at the border.
A particular difficulty for non-ACE carriers is that their cargo data is typically conveyed to CBP by a third party, a customs broker, and carriers are not always in a position to know if the transmission was successful, CTA said.
The policy was to have been applied at ports where ACE is currently available, including busy crossings such as Detroit, Port Huron and Blaine. Since the plan to move to Phase 4 enforcement was announced in late January, carriers have been raising concerns about the amount of time required to become ACE ready, uncertainty over the need to obtain ACE accounts, and various technical issues surrounding system functionality. It is expected that the truck manifest component of ACE will become mandatory at some point in 2006, though CBP has not yet announced a firm date, CTA said.