“As trade rapidly evolves, our laws and practices can’t keep up,” Customs & Border Protection argues in a new video and related documents calling for “a structured modernization approach that will enable the U.S. Government to address modern trade challenges, leverage emerging opportunities, and achieve transformational long-term change. ”
The CBP vision envisions three key actions which it says will harness the power of modern technology, move data from beginning to end of the supply chain, making trade safe and more efficient. The result: American businesses will grow more jobs because they will be protected from unethical business practices and intellectual property theft. Enhanced technologies will clear goods at U.S. borders swiftly and securely.
Those three principles are:
- Achieve end-to-end supply chain transparency— leverage data and technology to gain increased visibility throughout the supply chain, expediting entry processes and stamping out violative actions
- Drive data centric decision making— improve data sharing capabilities to enable real-time, data driven decisions by CBP and the trade community
- Diversify reasonable care standards— collect the right data, from the right parties, at the right time, improving data quality and eliminating single points of failure
This could lead, the agency argues, to a world where:
- legitimate goods are never subject to unexpected delays at the border;
- ink, paper and hours of manual data entry are things of the past;
- same day order fulfillment around the world
- forced labor practices are reduced within the supply chain, and
- the U.S. leads the world with innovative trade policy.