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Every year U.S. Customs and Border Protection (‘CBP’) releases the ‘CBP Trade and Travel Report’. Trade compliance practitioners should take note of these annual reports to keep abreast of CBP’s … current strategies and developments. Additionally, the information contained can provide insight into CBP’s strategic outlook for the future, a valuable tool for planning purposes.

In view of the continuing spread of the virus that causes the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for and imports of protective equipment in the EU Member States has increased and continues to increase, … increasing the workload of both customs brokers and customs. In order to facilitate and speed up the customs clearance of such goods and to enable more accurate statistics to be collected, new TARIC subheadings were introduced corresponding to the more detailed characteristics of the different face masks. We also provide an overview of standards that specify requirements for such goods.

Early 2020 saw the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic to almost every country on the planet. Healthcare workers, road hauliers, logistics specialists, international freight forwarders, agrifood … cooperatives… much has been said and written in the media about the problems faced by these groups of professionals as a result of the crisis. Are Customs brokers facing the same challenges?

When it was announced by the World Health Organization (WHO) that COVID-19 had become a pandemic, the WCO Secretariat’s management team quickly sprang into action, listing the urgent tasks to … be done to support Customs administrations in managing the crisis and developing a business continuity plan.

Since December 2019, when the first cases where identified, the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has spread with dramatic consequences for people, governments, and companies. Although we … will only be able to make a preliminary assessment of its full consequences in the coming months, most analysts agree that the crisis will have a long-term impact.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in ways that we never imagined. One thing, however, has become very clear; the continued importance of global trade and of initiatives supporting the … smooth flow of goods across borders, especially essential goods to areas where they are most needed.

With the current global spotlight on wild animal markets as a possible source of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is easy to forget that the biggest flows of “wildlife” in trade involve plants, not … animals. There are also important conservation and health reasons to keep a close eye on the wild plant trade sector during this global health emergency.

The effort undertaken by the WCO in building a comprehensive Performance Measurement mechanism (PMM) to measure the performance of Customs administrations aims at strengthening a measurement … culture among the WCO Membership, and at enabling them to develop metrics for strategic planning and evidence-based decision making.