CBP website helps track trade violations

In another step toward completing the overhaul of its commercial trade system, Customs and Border Protection has launched a new website and database that U.S. companies can use to track the potential dumping of products by foreign shippers.

The site aims to speed access to the Antidumping and Countervailing Duties (AD/CVD) data amassed by CBP and the Commerce Department. Companies can use the data to file for restitution if they feel a foreign competitor is dumping goods on the U.S. market for a lower price.

The updated website gives users faster and more accurate access to searchable copies of publicly available AD/CVD instructions. According to CBP, the site includes information on cash deposits, liquidation, scope rulings and other public instructions. The information is generated by Commerce findings on whether imported merchandise was sold in the U.S. at unfairly low or subsidized prices.

The new website is tied to CBP's effort to modernize its trade-processing system, called the Automated Commercial Environment. The agency plans to have all its core trade-processing operations incorporated into ACE by the end of 2016 and will decommission the corresponding capabilities in its legacy systems by then.

The agency is deploying ACE in seven segments, labeled A-G. The effort began in the fall of 2013 with deployment A and will end in the summer of 2016. CBP said the second segment was completed on Jan. 14.