Importers have until December 1 to tell U.S. Customs and Border Protection what they think of a plan that could eventually mean a lot more paperwork at the border. Nothing changes before then, and nothing is required of anyone yet. That distinction matters, because the outline for this issue originally flagged December as a deadline for importers themselves, and it isn’t one, at least not yet.
What’s actually happening is an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, published September 2 under docket USCBP-2026-1058. It is not a proposed rule. CBP is still gathering information to write one, and it’s doing so through 64 questions attached to the notice, the first formal step in implementing Section 3 of Executive Order 14411, the customs enforcement order President Trump signed in June.
The questions fall into four groups. The first asks whether importers should be required to obtain, keep, and produce the export declaration, invoice, and packing list their overseas supplier filed with its own government, on the theory that comparing those records to what shows up at the U.S. border is a way to catch dual invoicing and undervaluation.
The second takes aim at the manufacturer identification code most entries use today, which CBP considers too limited, and asks whether it should be replaced with something that captures full company names and addresses, names the online marketplace facilitating a sale, and identifies the ultimate delivery party.
The third asks whether a new Global Business Identifier should be required for manufacturers, shippers, or sellers at the time of entry, and, separately in question 43, whether entry filings themselves should be due sooner than the 15 calendar days importers get now.
The fourth runs through CTPAT, the trusted trader program, asking whether participants should adopt enhanced supply chain tracing technology, whether CBP should be able to see into that technology directly, what benefit should flow to partners who agree to it, and whether the program should tighten cybersecurity requirements and move participants away from platforms like LOGINK.
Trade lawyers reviewing the notice have flagged a problem that isn’t really about compliance so much as plumbing: a lot of the data CBP wants doesn’t sit anywhere an importer can easily reach it. Many importers don’t hold their supplier’s export declaration, don’t know whether the party they’re buying from is the actual manufacturer or a trading company standing in front of one, and routinely run into suppliers who won’t hand over tax IDs or factory addresses, treating that information as competitively sensitive.
There’s also a reasonable care question buried in question 5: how closely is an importer expected to vet a document it didn’t prepare and often can’t independently verify. Mismatches between foreign and U.S. paperwork are frequently legitimate and mundane, the product of FOB versus CIF shipping terms, assists and royalties handled differently across customs regimes, first sale pricing, currency conversion dates, or a shipment that got split into two.
Without contemporaneous records explaining why the numbers differ, any of that can look, on paper, like exactly the undervaluation CBP is trying to catch, and a missing document could shift from a recordkeeping footnote to the basis of a penalty case rather than a routine request for information. Importers with supply chains that run through a third country should also expect more scrutiny of substantial transformation, since part of the point of the export document requirement is catching goods transshipped to dodge country-specific tariffs.
None of it is settled, and CBP has said plainly that it wants quantitative cost and benefit data from the businesses that would have to live with these rules, not general objections. That makes the comment period more consequential than it looks. Trade counsel are advising companies to file their own specific, data-backed comments referencing individual question numbers, rather than leaving the response to trade associations alone, on the theory that a rule built from thin public input is a rule built without anyone’s actual operating reality in mind. Comments go in through the federal eRulemaking portal under docket USCBP-2026-1058.
What happens after December 1 is a proposed rule, then another comment period, then a final rule, each step with its own timeline. Compliance dates, if any of this survives to become a requirement, are more likely to land in 2027 than this winter. The practical advice for now is less about meeting a deadline and more about getting ahead of one that’s still a year or more away: find out whether your suppliers can actually produce export declarations and certificates of origin on request, take stock of who’s named on your entries versus who should be, and if CTPAT participation matters to your operation, start thinking about what new tracing or cybersecurity commitments might be worth trading for whatever benefit comes with them.