Census Looking to Remove Redundant State of Origin Reporting Requirement in AES

The Census Bureau is looking to eliminate one of two fields in the Automated Export System that collect redundant information on an export’s state of origin, said Omari Wooden, a Census official. Wooden, speaking Oct. 28 during the Pacific Coast Council's Western Cargo Conference, or Wesccon, said Census is hoping to either remove the state of origin data element in AES or not require the state to be reported in the address of the U.S. Principal Party in Interest.

“We're trying to make sure that we figure out the best way to get rid of one of those fields,” Wooden said. “They're capturing the exact same thing.”

Wooden’s comments came days after the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America submitted comments to Census about the issue, saying it was causing AES reports to contain “duplicative information” (see 2310240069). Although Census wants to eliminate the redundancy, Wooden said, the process isn’t a quick fix because it could impact Census’ time series data, which includes characteristics of persons, families and dwellings over time.

“While we're not breaking the time series, we're ultimately changing the time series. Because what's going to happen is, this field feeds into other data products related to state of origin where goods are manufactured or where goods are shipped from,” he said. “We just want to make sure that we're changing that statistically in the correct way.”

Wooden said Census is still working through its 2021 proposal for a new country of origin reporting requirement in AES. An agency official said Census is mulling whether to withdraw the proposed rule due to the negative feedback it received (see 2309130002). Many commenters said it would impose an unfair time and cost burden (see 2112140033, 2203160026 and 2301230008).

Although Wooden said the comments were “overwhelmingly unfavorable,” Census is still trying to determine if there’s another way to capture that data that wouldn’t burden filers. “That is still something that is ongoing,” he said.