HOUSE PANEL APPROVES PORT SECURITY BILL

The US House of Representative's Homeland Security Committee unanimously approved the Security and Accountability for Every (SAFE) Port Act April 26. The full House will likely vote on the measure this week while that timeline for the legislation's counterpart bill in the US Senate is less certain. The bill would require Customs to eventually screen 98 percent of all incoming cargo for nuclear materials, increase requirements for participants in Customs' Container Security Initiative (CSI) and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program and require background checks of all workers at US ports. The Committee rejected, by an 18-16 vote, an AAFA/US business community-opposed amendment that would have required 100 percent screening of US-bound cargo before departure from foreign ports. The amendment would also have required electronic seals on all US-bound cargo containers. If the amendment had passed, international trade would have likely slowed to a crawl as limited resources at Customs struggled to physically inspect a slew of containers registering false positives for nuclear materials and equipped with faulty electronic seals because today's technology cannot provide reliable screening or secure and reliable seals. Therefore, the Committee approved another amendment to increase resources to improve current technology. The supporters of the reject amendment have vowed to bring the it to a vote again when the full House considers the legislation. The Committee also rejected an amendment that would have removed the lower scoring that C-TPAT participants receive under Customs' Automated Targeting System (ATS). Customs uses ATS to assign a risk score to US-bound cargo to determine which cargo should be flagged for further inspection. Posted May 3, 2006.   

GUATEMALA MISSES MAY 1 DEADLINE TO JOIN CAFTA  

Due to delays in passage of necessary implementing legislation in Guatemala's Congress, Guatemala will NOT join the US/Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) on May 1 as expected. Guatemala will now likely join the agreement on June 1. Meanwhile, most experts still believe that the Dominican Republic will join on July 1. Costa Rica's Congress has yet to even approve the agreement, possibly pushing enactment of CAFTA for Costa Rica into late fall or early 2007.  Posted May 3, 2006..