Routed Export Rule May Not Be Ready Until 2021, Census Official Says

The Commerce Department’s long-awaited proposed regulations on routed export transactions may not be issued until next year, a Census Bureau official said. Both Census and the Bureau of Industry and Security have been working closely on the rule but have struggled to pinpoint a release date. “I thought it would happen this year, but I'm going to go with probably 2021,” Kiesha Downs, chief of Census’ Foreign Trade Division’s regulations branch, said during a July 15 webinar hosted by Census. “It's just a matter of ironing out a couple more things.”

The rule, which must be issued simultaneously by BIS and Census because of the significant overlap within the rule between the two agencies, was first expected to be published in 2019 (see 1904170064) but has been met with delays. Commerce officials met with the Office of the General Counsel in June to try to make progress on the rule, which is expected to include major changes to the process around assigning filing responsibilities to forwarders and address information sharing among parties in routed export transactions (see 2006020049).

“I would say we're really close, but it always seems like we're really close but really far,” Downs said. “We are currently working through some of our final last steps with [BIS].” Downs said a major focus of the rule is to better align definitions within Census' Foreign Trade Regulations and BIS's Export Administration Regulations. “We tried to synchronize them to ensure that some of the gray areas that you could interpret are spelled out in black and white in both sets of regulations,” she said. When the rule is released, Downs said industry should expect major changes to current routed transactions. “If this rule ever gets published,” Downs said, “it will be drastically different from what you read as routed today.”