Hot topics for international traders: The view from Washington

Every year, Peter Friedmann, Washington counsel for the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade (CONECT), closes the group's annual Northeast Trade and Transportation conference with a rapid-fire rundown of his take on some issues that will affect international traders in the coming year. Here are just a few excerpts from Friedmann's presentation at the 2013 conference, held in Newport, R.I., in April:

• The sequester-related elimination of overtime for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the busiest land borders and seaports "could turn out to be almost as disruptive as a strike." There's no need to cut overtime because the Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF) pays for it, and that has not been cut. And why have furloughs, for that matter? "Is CBP so lean and mean that it can't find 5 percent to cut in its operating costs?"
• The CBP commissioner's position has been vacant for more than a year, and the Obama administration may not appoint another commissioner. The "next wave" of top CBP managers, moreover, is likely to include "political bureaucrats" rather than the current managers, who worked their way up through the ranks and have developed a cooperative relationship with the trade community. Politicization will mean officials will have less freedom to interact on their own with international traders. "This may be our last opportunity to work with the Customs we've known for years."
• CBP wants customs brokers to take on a larger role in vetting importers from a security standpoint. The express couriers, which clear a significant amount of import shipments, say they can't do that because of their high shipment volumes and tight time restrictions for delivery. "In my view, CBP is leaning toward giving express couriers a pass on some of this."
• Bigger ships carrying more containers need to be worked faster than is currently being done at most U.S. ports. Ports should be looking at the Charleston model, which accepts automation like bar-code readers and uses nonunion labor to operate cranes while International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) members do other jobs on the ground. As a result, Charleston moves an average of 42 containers an hour. ("They talk slow, they eat slow, but they lift containers twice as fast as any other U.S. port.")