SJC Customs Training

The October 2011 Customs Broker License Exam (CBE) is over, having occurred on Monday, October 3.  Preliminary answer keys and speculation are now popping up here and there, but as far as official information, all we have at this point is the actual exam (borrowed from an examinee after the test).

Still, a preliminary review of the exam does yield some nuggets worth taking note of, at least for those interested in this CBE or in the CBE in general.   Without speculating on the pass rate, one can see that this exam had more in common with the October 2010 exam than with the April 2011 exam.  There appeared to be, as one candidate put it, a certain “looseness” in the way questions were grouped, meaning that there seemed to be less exactness in question selection and/or placement.

In the Classification Section, for example, Questions 24 and 34 could be most effectively answered by consulting not the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) (as is typically the case for this section), but rather the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).  Similarly, Questions 11 and 12, found in the Entry Section, might in other exams be placed in the Classification Section or perhaps in a Trade Agreements section as they were squarely answered by the HTS rather than the CFR.  The change in title of the last section from “General” to “Miscellaneous” seems to reinforce this “mixed bag” character of the exam.

There was definite overlap, however, with April 2011 in certain topic areas such as a focus on the Ultimate Consignee directive (CBP Directive 3550-079).   Along with a section, for the first time ever, entirely devoted to the Power of Attorney, this focus on the fundamental question of who can serve as the principal actors in the entry transaction reflects an apparent concern at CBP (US Customs & Border Protection) that the trade community has not engaged in sufficiently careful or rigorous application of existing rules and standards in screening importers of record, consignees and others making entry or attempting to import goods.

Along the same lines, one senses that the transition that the exam process has undergone in the last few years, from the change in eligibility requirements to the relatively varied approach in exam construction, may be linked not only to changes in regulatory approach to customs transactions, but also to a debate on what the role of a licensed customs broker should be in today’s trade community.   For more information on this changing role, you can go to this page on CBP’s website.

Should a licensed Customs Broker be someone who is competent in navigating and understanding the rules and regulations?  Or should she also be required to know how the rules operate in practice, i.e. in the context of an actual customs transaction that affects cargo?  It might be obvious that both skill sets are needed, but the question of how to shape license requirements (including exam content) is an extremely tricky one, almost as tricky (if not more) as trying to figure out (with not much information) who would make a good broker and who would not.