According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) media release on March 8th, 2018 – CBP released their new strategy to deal with the increase in volume of e-commerce packages into the United States.
The media release is wordy and you are already to go back to Facebook – so here’s a quick cliff notes version of the media release:
1. More people are using the internet to buy direct from China, leading to more small packages entering the US.
2. The large increase in volume of small packages (commonly indicated as “e-packet delivery”) means there is a greater likelihood of things entering the country that should not enter.
3. CBP is worried about a greater entry of items that violate intellectual property rights (fake watches, counterfeit purfume, fake iphones, etc) will make it into the US.
Some highlights of the CBP e-commerce strategy:
1. Educate people to be aware of customs regulations. Not sure how easy it will be to make people aware of customs regulations when people can’t even follow traffic regulations!
2. Partnership with foreign governments
3. Improve data collection from CBP targeting systems and field personnel.
4. The media release includes a lot of buzzwords: “more agile, dynamic workforce that utilizes state-of-art techniques and technology to better target high-risk shipments, improving data collection from CBP targeting systems, and leveraging enforcement partnerships.”
My thoughts:
Personally, I do not believe methods 1-4 will be able to adequately address the increased flow of these small packages from China. I believe CBP has other methods that they are not publicizing, and rightly so. Notifying the public how CBP searches for items that violate IPR, are counterfeit or not allowed for entry into the US would be counter-intuitive and could only lead to foreign manufacturers creating work arounds.
If you are a manufacturer overseas and ship many small package items to the US and want to know how this can effect your business, call experienced trade and customs attorney, David Hsu, 832.896.6288 or email at attorney.dave@yahoo.com