1. Additional information is needed that pushes back further and deeper into the supply chain, than the 24-Hour and Trade Act rules. We need about 23 data elements from 6 existing commercial documents. Things like confirmed purchase orders. We need to know where containers have been before they reach a CSI port. We need to know the identity of the foreign manufacturer, or real shipper.
We need this information in order to improve our targeting for the terrorist threat—and thereby, reduce the number of anti-terrorism security inspections needed.
2. Implement “one window into government” for all trade data. That is a promise of ACE, and linking other government agencies with ACE through ITDS.
3. Get the Advance Passenger Information, not at wheels up, but before the plane pushes back, before the boarding process is complete. In that way, known terrorists can be prevented from boarding aircraft. This would be a 60 minute or 30 minute rule—or something equivalent.
4. Implement that Framework of Standards that the World Customs Organization has adopted.
5. Implement a “smart box”—the use of a tamper-evident container that will make the green lane a reality.
6. Establish the Green Lane.
Developing a tamper evident container with low false positive reads is still a work in progress. It is the lynchpin and final step needed to make the Green Lane a reality.
7. Add infrastructure such as bridges and FAST and NEXUS lanes. Nowhere is this more important than in the Michigan-Ontario segment of our border.
8. Security of a company’s supply chain should be a required topic of discussion in corporate boardrooms. Security of supply chains is often as important to the financial survival of a company as the accuracy of a company’s financial statements.
9. Make the good government idea of “One Face at the Border” a reality. There should only be one agency at the borders, CBP, although CBP does and should act for all other agencies, whether that is USDA, the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the DEA, or the FDA, or any other agencies, but these agencies should not have separate personnel at the ports of entry.
10. Gain control of our borders with Mexico and Canada, between the entry points, by implementing the Secure Border Initiative that Secretary Chertoff announced recently.
The complete text of his speech is available below if you click to the CBP website.
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/commissioner/speeches_statements/chamber_of_commerce.xml