U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced a new series of quarterly training webinars and resources to help small- and medium-sized businesses report trade violations that threaten their bottom line and hurt the broader U.S. economy. The announcement was delivered yesterday during the 2023 World Korean Business Conference.
“Duty evasion, forced labor, and other trade violations pose existential threats to the small- and medium-sized businesses that drive American innovation and competitiveness,” said CBP Executive Assistant Commissioner AnnMarie Highsmith. “The new webinars on the Trade Violations Reporting Tool will empower local and regional companies to partner with CBP in protecting against unfair competition and ensuring a level economic playing field.”
The webinars will run from November 7, 2023, through September 10, 2024, and will guide participants through the process of reporting commercial trade violations using the Trade Violations Reporting Tool. This user-friendly, accessible, web-based platform streamlines CBP’s enforcement processes and enables users to easily report violations without the need for extensive resources or specialized knowledge. The webinars will demonstrate how to report allegations of a variety of trade violations, including antidumping and countervailing duty evasion, forced labor, and natural resource crimes. All webinars will be free of charge, open to the public, and recorded to produce training videos for the CBP website.
Reporting illicit trade practices can help maintain healthy competition as well as promote innovation and sustainable growth for American businesses. CBP deployed the first iteration of its Trade Violations Reporting Tool in 2008 to enable members of the trade community and the general public to submit allegations of suspected trade violations. CBP’s recent improvements to the tool increase program transparency and communication with allegers to ensure a more streamlined, cohesive, and visible end-to-end process. The Trade Violations Reporting Tool now automatically notifies allegers when there are updates to their allegations, including the result of the investigation, so that allegers are updated throughout the lifecycle of the allegation.
Any person or organization can report detailed trade violation allegations through CBP’s Online Trade Violations Reporting Tool or by calling 1-800-BE-ALERT. CBP encourages individuals and organizations interested in reporting trade violations to review these user guides and instructional materials and to register for an upcoming webinar on the CBP website.
