New NAFTA Customs Chapter Includes Section on Brokers
The customs chapter for the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or revised NAFTA, includes some provisions aimed at customs brokers. Those provisions, included in Article 7.21, stipulate that self-filing must be permitted and that customs broker licensing requirements must be transparent. Also, "no Party shall impose arbitrary limits to the number of ports or locations that a customs broker may operate," it says. "A Party shall allow a licensed customs broker to electronically submit a customs declaration and import documentation to the electronic systems" at "any port at which it is licensed to operate."
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Some provisions in the customs chapter, including language on trusted trader programs and single window systems, closely resemble the World Trade Organization's Trade Facilitation Agreement. Heavy reliance on the TFA for the trade deal was expected (see 1712010039).
The text seems to keep in place restrictions for companies trying to claim substitution drawback. "The original NAFTA limitation on duty deferral and duty drawback (previous NAFTA Article 303) is incorporated in the new agreement," law firm Pisani & Roll said in an email about the deal. That limitation is now spelled out in Article 2.5 of the market access chapter. Michael Cerny, a lawyer with Sandler Travis, agreed in an interview that the drawback language appears to be similar to the existing NAFTA, but noted it's not identical and that even small changes could make for meaningful differences. "I think it’s going to take folks a few days" to get a full understanding of the text, he said. There was some hope that the NAFTA talks would result in an end to the drawback limits (see 1705100034).