Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR): Clarification of Filing Requirements Regarding In-Transit Shipments and Other FTR Provisions

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>Census Bureau</SUBAGY> <CFR>15 CFR Part 30</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket Number: 241010-0268] </DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN: 0607-AA62</RIN> <SUBJECT>Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR): Clarification of Filing Requirements Regarding In-Transit Shipments and Other FTR Provisions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Census Bureau, Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Bureau of the Census (Census Bureau) proposes to amend its regulations to clarify the requirements governing in-transit shipments from foreign countries through the United States that are subsequently exported to a foreign destination. This rulemaking proposes to clarify who is the U.S. Principal Party in Interest (USPPI) and revise the entry number description when goods are entered into the United States for consumption or warehousing, and then stored in a warehouse or storage facility or admitted into a Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) before being exported. This rule also proposes to clarify that when a customs broker is the USPPI and they are requested to provide information from the customs entry for the filing of the Electronic Export Information (EEI), that they obtain consent from their client, as required in the customs regulations. Additionally, this proposed rule revises several sections, including definitions, mandatory filing requirements, responsibilities of parties to the export transaction, confidentiality, penalties, and voluntary self-disclosures to ensure clarity, accuracy, and consistency throughout the FTR. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be received on or before December 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov.</E> The identification number for this rulemaking is identified by RIN number 0607-AA62; or • By email directly to <E T="03">gtmd.ftrnotices@census.gov.</E> Include RIN number 0607-AA62 in the subject line. All comments received are part of the public record. No comments will be posted to <E T="03">http://www.regulations.gov</E> for public viewing until after the comment period has closed. Comments will generally be posted without change. All Personally Identifiable Information (for example, name and address) voluntarily submitted by the commenter may be publicly accessible. Do not submit confidential business information or otherwise sensitive or protected information. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Epa Uwimana, Chief, Economic Management Division, Census Bureau, 4600 Silver Hill Road, Washington, DC 20233-6010, by phone (301) 763-6064, by fax (301) 763-8835, or by email <E T="03">epaphrodite.uwimana@census.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The Census Bureau, as delegated to it by the Secretary of Commerce, is responsible for collecting, compiling, and publishing import and export trade statistics for the United States under the provisions of Title 13, United States Code (U.S.C.), Chapter 9, Section 301(a). Under Title 13 U.S.C. 302, the Secretary of Commerce is authorized to promulgate regulations deemed by the Secretary to be necessary or appropriate and in such form or manner as the Secretary determines are necessary or proper to carry out the purposes of and prevent the circumvention of the requirements of Chapter 9 of Title 13. The Secretary also may promulgate regulations covering the confidentiality, publication, and disclosure of information collected under Chapter 9. The Secretary developed the Automated Export System (AES), consistent with Public Law 106-113 and considering the confidentiality requirements of Chapter 9 of Title 13, to collect EEI in concert with the export control and enforcement functions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the Department of Commerce, and the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls of the Department of State. Public Law 107-228 directed the Secretary to publish regulations requiring exporters to file Shippers' Export Declarations, now referenced as EEI, in the AES. As a result, the Census Bureau is responsible for publishing the FTR that set the export reporting requirements for preparing and filing the EEI in the Automated Export System (AES). The EEI is made up of mandatory, conditional, and optional data elements. The purpose of this rulemaking is to revise the FTR to define the USPPI and revise the description of the entry number when goods enter the United States for consumption or warehousing, and then stored in a warehouse or storage facility or admitted into a FTZ before being exported. The Census Bureau has experienced an increase in the number of inquiries regarding export transactions where a customs broker enters goods into the United States for consumption or warehousing, and then stored in a warehouse or storage facility or admitted into a FTZ before being exported. In this proposed rule we are expanding the scenarios of the USPPI for goods that enter into the United States for consumption or warehousing, and then stored in a warehouse or storage facility or admitted into a FTZ before being exported. The current FTR 30.3(b)(2)(iv) and (v) allow the customs broker to be the USPPI when the customs broker or a foreign person is listed as the importer of record, respectively. However, this may no longer be practical when goods have been stored in warehouses, storage facilities, or FTZ for an extended period of time after entry. In many cases, additional parties other than the customs broker have knowledge and control of the goods for weeks, months or years and possess the goods in warehouses, storage facilities, or FTZs. Therefore, the Census Bureau is proposing the warehouse, storage facility or FTZ be considered the USPPI in these scenarios based on knowledge and control of the goods destined to be exported. Additionally, when the customs broker is the USPPI, it must obtain consent from its client to share information from the import entry that supports the preparation and filing of the EEI in the AES. The Census Bureau proposes to revise the conditional data element entry number description to require the entry number when foreign origin goods are entered into the United States for consumption or warehousing, and then stored in a warehouse or storage facility or admitted into a FTZ before being exported. The Census Bureau has evaluated the entry number on the EEI, as suggested in a comment from the trade community to the NPRM for the Country of Origin (COO) titled <E T="03">Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR): New Filing Requirement and Clarifications to Current Requirements</E> (RIN: 0607-AA59), published December 15, 2021 and has determined that the entry number will provide the Census Bureau with a linkage to the CBP entry data where the COO data can be obtained to achieve its statistical purposes. The Census Bureau also proposes to add one definition, remove one definition, and revise twelve other definitions in order to ensure that any revisions made to the FTR will allow for the continued collection of accurate trade statistics; revise the mandatory EEI filing requirements for exports subject to the Drug Enforcement Agency regulations; revise the list of information that a USPPI and an authorized agent provide in a routed export transaction; and clarify language regarding AES downtime, confidentiality, penalties, and Voluntary Self-Disclosures; and proposes to make grammatical and style changes in the FTR. The Census Bureau is seeking public comments from data users, businesses, and others to assess these proposed changes. Below are considerations when providing feedback to this proposed rule; however, any pertinent feedback not captured by these considerations is welcome. 1. Describe the potential value of clarifying who is the USPPI when goods enter the United States for consumption or warehousing, and then stored in a warehouse or storage facility or admitted into a FTZ before being exported. 2. Describe the potential value to all other changes to the FTR. 3. How long would a company that utilizes or manages proprietary software need to make programming changes to potentially adapt to the changes in this proposed rule and interface to the AES? 4. Are there business practices that a company would need to implement to come into compliance with the changes in this proposed rule? If so, how long would a company need to implement new business practices? Finally, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of State concur with the revisions to the FTR as required by 13 U.S.C. 303, and Public Law 107-228, division B, title XIV, section 1404. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Program Requirements</HD> To comply with the requirements of the Foreign Relations Act, Public Law 107-228, the Census Bureau is amending relevant sections of the FTR to revise or clarify export reporting requirements. Therefore, the Census Bureau is correcting 15 CFR part 30 by making the following correcting amendments: • Revise § 30.1(c) by amending the definitions for “Buyer”, “End user”, “Filer”, “Foreign port of unlading “, “Foreign Principal Party in Interest (FPPI)”, “Forwarding agent”, “Intermediate consignee”, “Order party”, “Seller”, “Shipment”, “Ultimate consignee”, and “U.S. Principal Party in Interest (USPPI)”. Additionally, add the definition for “Conveyance” and remove the definition for “Consignee”. • Revise § 30.2(a)(1)(iv)(D) by amending the Drug Enforcement Agency's authorization to require EEI filing in the AES for all licenses and permits under 12 CF ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 64k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━