Funding for Customs Automation Is on a Slow Roll

The Customs Service put its import-export automation eggs in a new basket called the Automated Commercial Environment. But funding and operational issues have delayed the delivery of ACE, and everyone involved in cross-border trade, including trucking, continues lurching along with the old system, hoping it won’t crash utterly and throw the customs-clearance process back into the Dark Ages of massive paper-filing.

ACE is designed to replace the aging Automated Commercial System. ACS suffers almost regular “brownouts,” or slowdowns, because it is 17 years old and is operating at 92% of its capacity. From January to June 1999, the system suffered as many as 100 outages a month, some of which were at least 24 hours long, according to customs officials. Were it to crash completely, they said, importers would have to file their entries the old-fashioned way, on paper. That could be a disaster for many businesses relying on just-in-time deliveries.

Because nearly 80% of the U.S. trade exchange with Canada and Mexico moves by truck, companies hauling international cargo have a stake in funding for the new system.

“Automation is part of the overall efficiency with border trade — 98% of imports are cleared through ACS,” said Martin Rojas, director of customs, immigration and cross-border operations for American Trucking Associations. But the brownouts and crashes leave trucks “stuck at the border.”

For the full story, see the Apr. 10 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.