Chapter 12. Security and Trade Facilitation
Author | T. James Min II, Matthew Vega |
Pages | 233-252 |
CHAPTER 12
Security and Trade Facilitation
T. JAMES MIN II
MATTHEW VEGA1
For the rst time in our nation’s history, one agency has the lone responsibility
for protecting our borders. As the single, uni ed border agency, CBP’s mission is
vitally important to the protection of America and the American people. CBP’s
priority mission is preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the
United States, while also facilitating the ow of leg itimate trade and travel.
—Robert C. Bonner, Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection
INTRODUCTION H
We all remember where we were on September , 200. One of the authors of
this chapter was sitting at his computer in the Ronald Reagan Building in the
Office of Regulations and Rulings of the U.S. Customs Service Headquarters in
Washington, D.C.; the other was in his office at the world headquarters of Fed-
eral Express in Memphis, Tennessee. There were reports of airplanes crashing
into buildings in New York. Then there were rumors of a plane crashing into the
Pentagon, a rumor of a bomb at the State Department, and chaos on the streets
of Washington, D.C., where U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Customs Ser-
vice, and USAID employees were trickling out of their buildings. We had no idea
what was going on. One of us was ordered to evacuate the government building
immediately; the other watched history unfold from a safer distance on a televi-
sion monitor in a crowded conference room within FedEx’s legal department.
The events that took place on that day are crystal clear to all of us whether
we were in Washington, D.C., New York, or any other part of the world. The
U.S. skies with no planes, U.S. ports closed, and U.S. international trade coming
to a halt. It was an eerie day for all Americans, but even more poignant for those
involved in international trade.
International trade since that day has never been the same. We have seen
a flurry of new programs, initiatives, regulatory requirements, and proposals to
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Mr. Min and Mr. Vega would like to thank Stephanie Joppeck for her assistance with research and citations in the
preparation of this chapter.
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secure America’s borders while facilitating legitimate trade. Many of these pro-
grams and requirements have placed enormous burdens on importers, carriers,
customs brokers, and other participants in international trade. Paralleling these
domestic developments, there has been a global effort at streamlining the clear-
ance of goods in the context of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Doha
Round trade facilitation negotiations and within frameworks developed by the
World Customs Organization (WCO). How do these efforts coincide or conflict?
This chapter will focus on and survey the various efforts and requirements that
have an impact on security and trade facilitation.
We initially address supply chain and conveyance security issues, examining
the response of the government and the impact on private industry. Our goal is
to acquaint you with programs such as the Customs-Trade Partnership Against
Terrorism (C-TPAT) and the Container Security Initiative (CSI), and make you
aware of the advance cargo information reporting requirements under mandates
such as the “24-hour manifest rule,” “0+2,” and the Bioterrorism Act. Our exam-
ination of trade security will then consider how harmful foreign products have
come to be viewed as a national security concern. We will, in this context, review
the response of the White House and the expanded role of the U.S. Consumer
Product Safety Commission. We will conclude with an appraisal of trade facili-
tation in the enhanced trade security environment, examining the international
response, as well as that of the United States.
THE POST–9/11 ENVIRONMENT H
We begin with a review of the post-September trade landscape. New initia-
tives arising after September can be categorized into three main areas: ()
governing regulatory authority, (2) supply chain screening, and (3) physical or
conveyance security. With respect to the governing regulatory authority, we
saw one of the largest bureaucratic reorganizations since World War II with the
creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Pursuant to the
Homeland Security Act of 2002,2 22 existing federal agencies were brought into
the newly created department. In the initial months, it was true bureaucratic
chaos. Over time, each new agency assumed much of its former identity but
with new uniforms. Many of the agencies were split or subsumed into other
units within DHS, whose primary goal is to protect the United States against
terrorist attacks. The roles of many of the subagencies are not purely security
related, however, which poses challenges to not only these legacy agencies, but
also to the trade community. The U.S. Customs Service, for instance, the oldest
U.S. government agency created by the Second Act of Congress in 789 and part
of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, was split into two separate agencies—
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforce-
ment (ICE). While both were made part of DHS, the Treasury Department
retained some oversight over the revenue-collection role of CBP. The reorgani-
zation clearly showed the preponderance of CBP’s new objective as security
related in contrast to the Customs Service’s historical role as a revenue collector
for the U.S. government.
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