§2084 Office of Trade

Summary

Creates an Office of Trade inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The office is run by an Executive Assistant Commissioner who reports to the CBP Commissioner. The office must make and carry out trade and customs policies and rules under U.S. law. It must advise the Commissioner about how policies affect trade help and trade enforcement, work with the Office of Field Operations, handle priority trade issues from the joint strategic plan, lead trade enforcement, and run trade modernization projects (including the Automated Commercial Environment and support for the International Trade Data System). It must also manage customs revenue duties as the law or the Commissioner gives it. The office must send a yearly report to the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee by June 1, 2016 and by March 1 each year after that. The report must list policy changes from the prior year and explain the public and interagency review done for each change. Within 30 days after February 24, 2016, the Commissioner must move the assets, duties, staff, and liabilities of the old Office of International Trade into the new Office of Trade and abolish the old office. No CBP or DHS money can be used to move those items to any other office unless the Commissioner tells four congressional committees at least 90 days before the move: the House Homeland Security Committee, House Ways and Means Committee, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Senate Finance Committee. The Commissioner may move other CBP assets, duties, or staff into the Office of Trade, but must notify those same committees at least 90 days before doing so. The terms “customs and trade laws,” “trade enforcement,” and “trade facilitation” use the meanings in section 4301. The “Office of International Trade” means the office as it existed the day before February 24, 2016.