To all BCBFA Members,
I received the below from Sandler, Travis and Rosenberg.

Customs Responds to Trade Concerns About Use of CF 28s
On February 21 the American Association of Exporters and Importers
(AAEI), the Joint Industry Group (JIG), and the US Business Alliance for
Customs Modernization (BACM) wrote to Customs regarding a recent field
initiative in which the Customs Form 28 (CF 28), Request for
Information, is used to request that companies produce information on
their supply chain security. The groups expressed concern at this use of
the CF 28, stating that formal information requests should only be used
to request information to which Customs is entitled by law, not
information it seeks under a voluntary program such as the Customs-Trade
Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT).

On March 19 Customs responded by announcing that it would direct its
field offices to discontinue using the CF 28 to request security
information from importers. Customs noted that the CF 28 responses
already collected from non-C-TPAT members "are sufficient for a high
level analysis of any correlation between supply chain security
procedures and the frequency of trade discrepancies." Customs noted that
the requested information, which "amounted to eleven yes/no replies,"
was significantly less detailed than the information required from
C-TPAT members.

Customs also downplayed the trade community's concerns regarding "the
impact of security procedures on admissibility, and the separation of
security issues from commercial compliance." Although Customs
acknowledged that "the weakest security procedures will not change the
status of otherwise admissible merchandise," it added that "both
security and commercial compliance have an impact on our risk
assessment." "The risk presented by a shipment can no longer be
evaluated without considering the process that brought it to our
borders," Customs said. "Trade compliance is not the sole determinant of
which shipments will be examined."

Geoffrey Powell
C.H. Powell Company - Baltimore
Telephone: (410) 752-5136
Fax: (410) 752-6106
Cellphone: (617) 803-2576
www.chpowell.com