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July 17, 2003 The following article is excerpted from the 16 July edition of “The Journal of Commerce”. Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner
said that proposed rules for advance electronic reporting of cargo data
should be published in the Federal Register in a few days to a week. "I rashly predicted that we would
have these out by the end of June," Bonner said, but he joked that
things move slowly in Washington. "I'm optimistic that we will get
the proposed Bonner was the keynote speaker on Wednesday at a conference on border trade and safety at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Congress ordered the rules in the Trade Act of 2002, that would effectively require the same kind of advance data reporting for truck, rail and air cargo that is required in ocean shipping under the 24-hour rule. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has an October. 1, 2003 deadline to implement the rules. Bonner said that he believed the Customs would meet the deadline, despite the delay in publication of the proposed rules. Bonner's remarks focused mainly on programs for expediting the movement of cargo and people across the Canadian and Mexican borders. Bonner said that "reverse inspections," the positioning of U.S. Customs officers in Canada, and Canadian officers in the U.S., "is a concept that is languishing." There are problems to be solved of officers' legal authority and national sovereignty,the activity would be limited to a few acres in "integrated border inspection areas," most likely at either end of one of the bridges that carry two-thirds of the cargo between Canada and the U.S. Allowing officers to screen cargo
before it crosses a bridge could prevent terrorists from destroying it,….
If that happened, Bonner said the U.S. and Canada would agree to
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