NEW YORK: Procrastinating importers and exporters who cheered the latest delay in U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s mandatory use of the Automated Commercial Environment for filing documentation are only hurting themselves if they don’t start using ACE when it becomes voluntary on Nov. 1, Customs specialists say.
The start of mandatory filing under ACE has been pushed back from Nov. 1 to next Feb. 28. ACE offers benefits to the trade community such as smoothing information flow between companies and the 50-plus federal government agencies that are involved in processing trade documentation. ACE also opens up better lines of communication between service providers such as customs brokers and forwarders and importers and exporters.
“This is our year for ACE,” Pat Fosberry, corporate export transportation manager at John S. James, told the annual South Carolina International Trade Conference. After waiting 20 years for implementation of Customs’ electronic trade platform, an additional wait of four months is rather easy to take.
In her blog last week in JOC.com, Los Angeles Customs and trade attorney Sue Ross said it was good that CBP delayed key roll-out dates for ACE until next year. She said the federal agencies that process trade documentation, and many companies in the trade community, were simply not ready for full implementation.
As of now, the use of ACE is “allowed and encouraged” for the electronic filing of entries and entry summaries beginning Nov. 1, Ross said. Feb. 28 is the new date when ACE becomes mandatory as the replacement for the current Automate Commercial System. Also on that date, several other federal agencies will begin using ACE. Implementation of ACE accelerates in the second half of 2016, with another half-dozen agencies joining the portal. On Dec. 16, 2016, ACE becomes the single window for all government agencies that process trade documentation.
