By Jennifer Horvath, Attorney, Braumiller Law Group

 On June 27, 2017, CBP postponed the implementation of the reconciliation processing capability within the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE).  The release date was originally targeted for July 8, 2017, but is now scheduled to deploy on February 24, 2018.  According to the CBP, the delay is related to continuing efforts to perfect interfacing among different ACE capabilities.  Oncereconciliation is released in ACE, importers will be able to file electronic submissions instead of paper filings and reconciliation capability will expand from the 13 ports currently available to all ports.

In conjunction with the rollout of reconciliation capabilities, CBP will continue to phase in additional core trade processing functions within ACE over the next year.  These will include: liquidation, drawback, duty deferral, statements, collections, and the Automated Surety Interface.  CBP expects these deployments to conform to the following schedule:

• September 16, 2017: Non-ABI Entry Summary, Duty Deferral, e214 (electronic Foreign Trade Zone admission) and Manufacturer ID Creation

• December 16, 2017: Statements

• February 24, 2018: ACE Core Drawback and Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (TFTEA) Drawback, Liquidation and Automated Surety Interface (ASI)

• Between February 2018 and February 2019, trade users will have the option to file either Core Drawback or TFTEA Drawback.