CBP to Replace ‘Forwarding Agent’ Term With ‘Authorized Agent’ in AES

CBP no longer will use the term “Forwarding Agent” in the Automated Export System, replacing it with “Authorized Agent,” the agency said in a Feb. 27 CSMS message. The Census Bureau requested the change, effective April 1, after the trade community told it the term forwarding agent can be “misleading.”

The change will replace all references to “Forwarding Agent” and “FWRD AGT” in the AES Trade Interface Requirements commodity record format, the AESDirect portal and AES appendices, such as commodity filing response messages, AES acronyms and definitions.

The authorized agent is the person or legal entity physically located in or under the jurisdiction of the U.S. that has power of attorney or written approval from the U.S. principal party in interest or foreign principal party in interest to act on its behalf and to file the Electronic Export Information, the CSMS message said. To verify that the authorized agent is the filer, Census said it relies on information in the filing’s “party records/section.”

But industry told Census that the term forwarding agent, which is currently in the party record/section and the appendices, isn’t always the right term. Although the forwarding agent and the authorized agent are the “same company” in most cases, in some scenarios the authorized agent files EEI and the forwarding agent “facilitates the movement of the export of that same shipment,” CBP said. In that scenario, Census “must ensure that the Authorized Agent information is collected in the party record for verification purposes.” The message said Census has seen “multiple” filings where forwarding agents couldn’t verify the data because they weren’t the filers.

“The Forwarding Agent in these filings only facilitated the export but did not prepare and file the EEI in AES,” the CSMS message said. “The same situation also applies when a [U.S. principal party in interest] files the EEI on their own behalf.”