The Census Bureau’s Economic Management Division (EMD) is seeking public comments on new export reporting requirements related to the country of origin. EMD is proposing to add a conditional data element—country of origin—when foreign origin is selected in the Foreign/Domestic Origin Indicator field in the Automated Export System (AES). In addition to the new export reporting requirement, the proposed rule would make corrective changes to the Foreign Trade Regulation (FTR) to improve clarity and to correct errors.
What This Means for Exporters
This will require exporters to increase their export compliance:
- Ensure you determine the correct country of origin (COO) at time of sourcing/production
- Program changes to capture the correct COO in your ERP
- Provide separate storage for those items of multiple origins in your warehouse
- Conduct training to meet this new requirement
Why The Change?
The shift is meant to help the U.S. collect more statistics on foreign trade, as the current statistics do not provide enough insight to identify shortcomings and imbalances in domestic supplies of critical goods and other supply chain issues. EMD hopes that adding the new country of origin data element will eliminate the reliance that the U.S. has on receiving the data from foreign trading partners.
Comments on the proposed change are due February 14, 2022.