Monday Morning eBriefing

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Friday evening, April 3, released guidance to the trade regarding the implementation of the April 2 Proclamation, “Strengthening Actions Taken to Adjust Imports of Aluminum, Steel, and Copper into the United States.” NCBFAA has provided CBP’s guidance in full below for the convenience of our customs broker members.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Implementation Guide (IG) can now be found in the “Implementation Guidelines: Ready for Coding” section of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website. The DEA message set was deployed to CBP’s ACE Production Environment on March 21, 2026. The new DE3 flag is being enforced with a WARNING severity.

Effective Feb. 6, 2026, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began issuing all refunds electronically via Automated Clearing House (ACH) (subject to limited exceptions), as announced in the Electronic Refunds Interim Final Rule published Jan. 2, 2026 in the Federal Register. This requires trade members to set up ACE Portal accounts and to submit ACH banking information so that CBP can issue ACH refunds instead of mailing refunds as U.S. Treasury checks. Importers without a U.S. bank account must either open a U.S. bank account or designate your customs broker with a U.S. bank account consistent with 31 U.S.C. 3332(g).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) highlighted the agency's expanded import inspection efforts during a widely publicized event at the Port of New York/Newark, promising vigorous enforcement of imported products. Importers can avoid costly and disruptive enforcement actions by reviewing the regulatory status of their products, the compliance of their supply chain partners, and by filing required import notices.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) om April 3 published an updated version of the Automated Transmission of Container Seal Changes to ACE Manifest Trade Information Notice. The updated notice includes an additional feature to be deployed to ACE production (PROD) environment to notify trade users when CBP personnel add or remove a container for ocean and rail shipments.

This analysis regarding Customs and Border Protection’s latest update system update on March 31 to the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) is provided by NCBFAA Customs Counsel and Legislative Advisor of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, P.A., and it reviews some key points about what Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) “Phase 1” will and won’t be doing.

President Trump on April 2 signed proclamation which adjusts the steel, aluminum, and copper Section 232 tariffs, as well as an executive order for pharmaceutical import tariffs. Specifically, the proclamation “defines the way that tariffs are assessed, ensuring that they reflect the full value of imported steel, aluminum, and copper products—not an artificially low foreign price,” while in his executive order, President Trump said he under Section 232 that his administration will impose a 100% tariff on patented pharmaceutical products and ingredients. The tariffs will take effect in 120 days for certain large companies, and 180 days for smaller companies.

Although our industry-leading 2026 NCBFAA Annual Conference at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa in San Antonio, Texas, on April 12-15, 2026, has sold out, we want to take this moment to thank our generous sponsors who help make this event a success.

A summary of the latest customs and cross-border trade regulatory updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Customs Counsel firm Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is urging importers to hold off on submitting first-quarter 2026 refund claims under the Craft Beverage Modernization Act (CBMA) due to data inaccuracies in its myTTB CBMA Importer Claims System. According to TTB, a transmission error involving data from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ACE has resulted in inflated quantity figures for a significant number of entries.

The Census Bureau on March 30 published a final rule updating the Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR) to remove cross-references to the EEI filing requirements of other Federal agencies. The requirements found in the regulations of other federal agencies remain unchanged, but they will no longer be cross-referenced in the FTR.

A summary of the latest legislative and regulatory transport, logistics and trade sector updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Transportation Counsel firm Venable.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has announced a series of upcoming webinars designed to guide importers and customs brokers through the final months leading up to implementation of eFiling for most regulated products. These sessions will provide a general overview of eFiling, share what you can expect upon full implementation, and highlight updates to the Product Registry.

On behalf of NCBFAA's Board of Directors, Leadership and Staff, we want to take a moment to acknowledge and welcome Alliance Customs Clearance, Carla Reniu dba Reniu Customs Brokerage, Leelynn Logistics, Majestic Supply Chain Solutions, and Voltrans Logistics, which have recently joined our association. We're so excited to have these firms join our organization and we are happy to assist in any way we can!

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a notice to the trade on April 1 that it has released a modernized ACE Secure Data Portal (ACE Portal) account application. Going forward, CBP said applicants are "strongly encouraged to use the applicable web-based ACE Portal application for faster processing by CBP." The agency will temporarily continue to accept the legacy PDF-based application during the initial roll out period for the new web-based application.

U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) Judge Richard Eaton in a March 27 order stated that Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with respect to “any and all unliquidated entries that were entered subject to IEEPA,” is “directed to liquidate those entries without regard to the IEEPA duties.”

A summary of the latest legislative and regulatory transport, logistics and trade sector updates brought to you by our NCBFAA Transportation Counsel firm Venable.

Since Feb. 6, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has had over 12,300 certified refunds rejected because the recipient party did not provide CBP the necessary banking information. If a refund recipient has failed to provide CBP valid U.S. bank account information in the ACE Secure Data Portal (ACE Portal), CBP is unable to deliver electronic refunds to that recipient.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on March 27 updated the Electronic Export Manifest (EEM) ACE Exports Truck UNEDIFACT CUSCAR Cargo Report Message, CUSRES Accept-Reject, CUSREP Conveyance Report, X12 309, and Crew and Passenger PAXLST Implementation Guides (IG).

The NCBFAA Customs Committee has been made aware of an issue from last week with ISF filings that were filed prior to bill creation in which the ISF bill match was not issued after the bill creation. This was resolved by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as of 1 p.m. ET on March 24 and any filings going forward should be fixed.