The following is excerpted from the 2 December 2010 edition of the "American Shipper".

The involvement of cargo airlines in developing a rule that would require the submission of advance data prior to departure from a foreign airport fits with the new mindset at U.S. Customs that new security measures should enhance the efficient movement of goods, Commissioner Alan Bersin told AmericanShipper.com.

The Department of Homeland Security has said it is exploring ways to get shipment information to feed its automated targeting system before the manifest is filed during flight so that dangerous cargo, like that from Yemen recently discovered on U.S.-bound freighters, can be stopped in the country of origin.

Under current rules, airlines must file the manifest four hours before arrival or at takeoff for nearby locations in North and South America.

DHS officials have praised express carriers and other airlines for their cooperation in trying to establish a new deadline for advance data ahead of the manifest. Policymakers say they want to understand how express delivery and air cargo carriers function, and how they secure their networks, so that security measures can be tailored to existing operations rather than immediately imposing draconian measures that could cripple an industry responsible for moving more than $806 billion in U.S.-international merchandise trade during 2008 -- the latest year for which government figures are available.

At least two pilot projects are being developed to inform the decision-making process.

Bersin said the collaboration is a manifestation of the new philosophy towards security he is trying to instill at Customs and Border Protection and the “grand bargain” he has consistently offered international shippers since taking office last April. Under the new security paradigm he is trying to construct, importers and transportation providers share more detailed, advance information about their trade partners and shipments in exchange for faster clearance of their goods.

The extensive talks with air carriers are designed to find “the sweet spot” between commerce and security, Bersin said in a pre-Thanksgiving interview from his office at CBP headquarters in Washington. Moving to a trusted shipper model, he said, even required a change in his own thinking to move beyond the traditional notion that security and trade facilitation need to be balanced. Bersin argues that a balanced policy works like a scale that, short of perfect equilibrium, results in one goal being short changed for the other...

Bersin said DHS is taking advantage of the current aviation security crisis to make the trusted shipper construct an integral part of the security equation because new measures that simultaneously diminish the capacity to conduct trade will end up hurting U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.

“The possibilities here are that we can have more security and more trade, and we can do that in a very practical way,” he said.

And a trusted shipper program like the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism shouldn’t stop with security issues, but address customs compliance and import safety as well, according to Bersin. The former federal prosecutor is aggressively pushing his staff to rethink how the agency interacts with importers so decisions are made based on their overall track record and internal controls rather than checking each individual shipment or customs entry -- a system known as “management by account.”

The agency recently launched two small pilot programs limited to customs compliance, but Bersin acknowledged that account management should encompass a wider array of issues to modernize border management.

“If you look at borders only as lines on a map, and the physical ports of entry, and all of your customs and immigration admissibility decisions are made only at that time and in that place you’re missing a lot of what the 21st century is about, which is not only the flow of data electronically, but also the flow of goods, people, ideas, capital across a world that in many respects is borderless,” he said.

“So we see the job as securing flows of people and cargo as early as we can and as far away geographically as we can from the physical borders. So management-by-account is therefore critical. If you trust the shipper, if you trust the supply chain, and you validate it according to very high standards then in fact we should be doing a lot of pre-clearance in effect before the goods come to the physical port of entry.”

Michael Mullen, executive director of the Express Association of America and a former assistant commissioner at Customs, said his members strongly support CBP’s thorough approach of collaborating with the private sector to test the data elements, collection timeframes and how the data is analyzed to ensure that any rule actually improves security...