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Pictured above: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers and Center of Excellence and Expertise (Center) staff assigned to the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport complex seized 7,800 pairs of high-fashion shoes bearing counterfeit “Salvatore Ferragamo” listed trademarks. If genuine, the seized footwear would have had an estimated manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $4,290,000.

The Centers of Excellence and Expertise are CBP’s way of bringing their specialization across multiple, high-value and highly imported commodity groups together in virtual groups.

Perhaps best, we’ll let them describe their mission in the first paragraph of a recently released guidance document:

The Centers of Excellence and Expertise (Centers) applies U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBPs) trade expertise to a single industry using account-based principles and operational skills to authoritatively facilitate trade. The Centers serve as resources to the broader trade community and to CBP’s U.S. government partners. Center personnel are strategically located at the Ports of Entry across the nation and answer questions, provide information and develop comprehensive trade facilitation strategies to address uniformity and compliance concerns.

You can continue to read onward at the link if you’d like. There are a total of ten centers scattered across the country, from Buffalo to Los Angeles, from Detroit to Laredo and all points in between.

Coppersmith has always been on the forefront of the newest and most cutting edge programs that CBP and PGA’s have offered. Whether owing to Jeff Coppersmith’s past presidency of the NCBFAA or his role on the COAC, we realize that if Coppersmith is going to be in an industry leadership position, we should fully make ourselves available to the regulatory agencies to work with them and bring our nearly seventy years of expertise to bear and help them better understand how to not just regulate, but work with, the trade they interface with.

If your company is already in a CEE or falls into one of the designated ten industries, contact your Coppersmith representative or one of our sales team to get an understanding as to how the process differs from filing entries for release at a local port of entry.

Victoria Lane

Author Victoria Lane

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