Certificates of Compliance

<RULE> CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION <CFR>16 CFR Part 1110</CFR> <DEPDOC>[CPSC Docket No. 2013-0017]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Certificates of Compliance</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Consumer Product Safety Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In consultation with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (Commission or CPSC) issues this final rule (the Final Rule) to revise the agency's regulation for Certificates of Compliance (certificates). The Final Rule aligns CPSC's current certificates rule with other CPSC rules on testing and certification, and implements, for importation of products and substances regulated by CPSC, electronic filing of certificates (eFiling) with CBP. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> For all CPSC regulated consumer products and substances subject to the Final Rule and required to be certified, except for products and substances imported into a foreign trade zone (FTZ) and subsequently entered for consumption or warehousing, the Final Rule is effective on July 8, 2026. For CPSC regulated products and substances entered from an FTZ for consumption or warehousing, the Final Rule is effective on January 8, 2027. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kat Rickerson, eFiling Program Specialist, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, 4330 East-West Highway, Bethesda, MD 20814; telephone 240-429-4257; email: <E T="03">eFilingsupport@cpsc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> The Commission is issuing a final rule to revise the requirements for certificates of compliance (certificates) (the Final Rule) in 16 CFR part 1110 (part 1110 or the 1110 rule). The Final Rule applies to importers, domestic manufacturers, and private labelers who are required to issue certificates for consumer products and substances  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> regulated by CPSC that are imported for consumption or warehousing into the United States or are distributed in commerce in the United States. The Commission promulgated the existing part 1110 for certificates in 2008. The existing rule tracks the statutory requirements for certificates in section 14 of the Consumer Product Safety Act (CPSA), designates importers as the certifier for imported products and manufacturers as the certifier for domestically manufactured products, and allows for “electronic” certificates to satisfy the requirement that a certificate “accompany” the product or shipment of products, meaning a URL to access the certificate or a PDF file. 73 FR 68328 (Nov. 18, 2008); 15 U.S.C. 2063(a), (g). <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Section 14(a) of the CPSA requires that manufacturers, including importers, and private labelers issue certificates for all consumer products subject to a consumer product safety rule under the CPSA, or a similar rule, ban, standard, or regulation under any other law enforced by the Commission, that are imported for consumption or warehousing or distributed in commerce. 15 U.S.C. 2052(a)(11)-(12); 15 U.S.C. 2063(a)(1). In this Final Rule, all consumer products and substances subject to a CPSC rule, ban, standard, or regulation required to be certified under section 14(a) of the CPSA are referred to as “consumer products” or “products.” </FTNT> In 2013, the Commission issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) to revise part 1110 to align with rules for testing children's products under 16 CFR part 1107 (part 1107 or the 1107 rule) and component part testing under 16 CFR part 1109 (part 1109 or the 1109 rule). 78 FR 28080 (May 13, 2013) (2013 NPR). Consistent with section 222 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), which requires the Commission develop a Risk Assessment Methodology (RAM) to identify imported products likely to include consumer products in violation of section 17(a) of the Consumer Product Safety Act (15 U.S.C. 2066(a)) or other import provisions enforced by the Commission, for imported consumer products, the 2013 NPR also proposed to require eFiling of certificates with CBP at the time of filing the CBP entry, or the time of filing the entry and entry summary, if both are filed together. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> 15 U.S.C. 2063(g)(4). <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  CBP regulations define “entry” as the documentation or data required to secure the release of imported merchandise from CBP custody, or the act of filing that documentation. <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 141.0a(a). CBP regulations define an “entry summary” as any other documentation or data necessary for CBP to assess duties, collect statistics on imported merchandise, and determine whether other requirements of law or regulation have been met. <E T="03">See</E> 19 CFR 141.0a(b). An entry can be made as either a 2-Step or 1-Step process. As a 2-Step process, an entry is filed initially and an entry summary is filed within 10 days of entry filing. As a 1-Step process, an entry summary is filed which serves as both the entry and entry summary filing. <E T="03">See e.g.,</E> 19 CFR 141.68(b). Consequently, using the term “entry” encompasses both processes, irrespective of whether the entry/CBP Form 3461 is filed for a 2-Step or a 1-Step entry process where the entry summary/CBP Form 7501 serves as the entry. </FTNT> Currently, CPSC collects certificates only after staff identifies a shipment for examination; certificate data are not generally collected and therefore cannot be used effectively to target shipments for examination. The purpose of eFiling is to allow CPSC to use data from a certificate to assess the health and safety risk of consumer products when they are being imported into the United States, and to better focus CPSC's resources for examinations and holds at the ports on products that are more likely to be non-complaint, while reducing inspection delays for compliant products. The RAM processes data, including entry data and soon certificate data as well, using algorithms to increase or decrease RAM risk scores for each product shipment. Risk scores assist port staff in their assessment of incoming shipments and in interdicting non-compliant consumer products. Using certificate data for more precise targeting will maximize examination efficiency for stakeholders and staff; help CPSC to keep hazardous, violative products out of consumer's hands; and reduce burden on industry by reducing inspection delays for compliant products. Since 2013, the Commission has undertaken a series of projects to advance implementation of an eFiling requirement, including conducting an eFiling Alpha Pilot, a Certificate Study, and an eFiling Beta Pilot. In December 2020, the Commission approved a multi-year plan to implement an eFiling program at CPSC. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Moreover, since 2013, CBP has completed development and implementation of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), which is the system through which the U.S. government has implemented the “single window,” the primary system for processing trade-related import and export data required by government agencies. The transition away from paper-based procedures results in faster, more streamlined processes for both government and industry. Specifically, CBP developed the Partner Government Agency (PGA) Message Set as a way for U.S. government agencies to electronically collect additional import-related data. The eFiling Alpha and Beta Pilots were conducted in conjunction with CBP and tested use of CPSC's PGA Message Sets. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The 2020 staff briefing package to implement an eFiling program at CPSC is available at: <E T="03">https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/CPSC-Plan-to-Create-an-eFiling-Program-for-Imported-Consumer-Products.pdf.</E> The record of commission action is available at: <E T="03">https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/RCA-CPSC-Plan-to-Create-an-eFiling-Program-for-Imported-Consumer-Products.pdf.</E> </FTNT> On December 8, 2023, the Commission published a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPR) proposing to revise part 1110 to, among other things: revise terminology to incorporate concepts that had been introduced in the 1107 and 1109 rules but not yet included in part 1110; broaden the definition of “importer” in part 1110 to address commenters' concerns about the product certifier having control over and knowledge of the goods; allow private labelers to test and certify products; and implement eFiling for imported consumer products regulated by CPSC. 88 FR 85760 (SNPR). The Commission received 47 comments on the SNPR, addressed in section IV of this preamble, and is now finalizing the rule to revise part 1110, with clarifications and modifications in response to commenters' concerns. <E T="51">4 5</E> The Final Rule specifies the entities that must issue certificates for finished products, including domestically manufactured and imported products, in accordance with section 14(a) of the CPSA, as amended, 15 U.S.C. 2063(a); specifies certificate content, form, and availability requirements in section 14 of the CPSA; requires importers to eFile certificate data with CBP for imported finished products that must be certified; and clarifies which provisions of part 1110 apply to voluntary component part certificates. <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  On December 18, 2024, the Commission voted (3-0-2) to publish the Final Rule, with all five Commissioners voting to approve the rule; and a majority voting to approve the rule with an amendment extending the general implementation date from 12 months to 18 months. All Commissioners issued a statement in connection with their vote. The Record of Commission Action and Commissioner statements are available at: <E T="03">https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/RCA-Final-Rule-to-Implement-eFiling-for-Certificates-of-Complianc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 340k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━