Home Media Center News Releases

Washington, D.C. —Inadequate funding to support the vital trade-related functions of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is costing the U.S. billions in otherwise collectible duties and fees, the leader of the union representing the CBP workforce told a Senate subcommittee today.

CBP is the second-largest generator of revenue for the U.S. Treasury, collecting more than $32 billion annually in connection with the nation’s more than $2 trillion-a-year commercial trade activities, said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). Since 2003, the number of trade compliance personnel in CBP has largely been frozen.

The NTEU leader said in testimony submitted to the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade that CBP’s trade compliance personnel “enforce over 400 U.S. trade and tariff laws and regulations, in order to ensure a fair and competitive trade environment pursuant to international agreements and treaties.”

CBP trade personnel are responsible for stopping illegal transshipments, goods with falsified country of origin, goods that are misclassified, and for collecting anti-dumping and countervailing duties. “The ongoing freeze in the number of CBP trade compliance and enforcement staff undermines this mission,” she said. Trade compliance works hand-in-hand with CBP’s other key mission of protecting the nation’s security through frontline efforts at 331 air, land and sea ports of entry.

President Kelley called on the subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), to focus on the question of how much CBP trade enforcement staffing shortages cost in terms of revenue loss to the Treasury.

A 2007 Government Accountability Office report found, for example, that such shortages led to under-collection of an estimated $150 million in anti-dumping duties in 2006 alone. Moreover, the same report estimated that $500 million in such duties were left uncollected between 2001 and 2008.

“These numbers are unacceptable at any time, but are especially damaging and disappointing in our present economic circumstances,” she said, emphasizing that the men and women of CBP “are deserving of more resources and technology so they can perform their jobs betters and more efficiently.”

President Kelley said NTEU supports Section 5 of S. 3725, introduced by Subcommittee Chairman Wyden in the last Congress, that addresses the allocation of CBP trade personnel, but believes that this provision should be strengthened to authorize the hiring of additional needed CBP trade staff to enforce the over 400 U.S. trade and tariff laws and regulations for which they are responsible; to end the current practice of tariff sharing at several major ports of entry; and to ensure full tariff coverage at major trade ports of entry.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including the more than 24,000-employee CBP workforce.