11 June 1999

US Automated Export System

The following article is excerpted from "The Journal of Commerce" of 11 June 1999.

Not many things in life are certain, but one of them is that export controls will be tightened as a result of the furor over allegations that China stole nuclear missile technology... Congress will have all the evidence it needs to write sweeping new legislation regulating exports...

One program that's likely to be a beneficiary of the China crisis is the Automated Export System, a joint project of the [US] Customs Service and the Census Bureau. AES allows export documentation to be transmitted quickly and cheaply to the government over a computer.

It has two objectives. One is to give Customs an effective tool to prevent exports of stolen automobiles and other contraband by giving the agency detailed information prior to the shipment's export.

The other objective is to enable Census to collect accurate export data. US exports are believed to be under-reported by 20 per cent or more because traditional paper Shipper Export Declarations contain so many errors. AES blocks any transmission that is missing required information or contains unreasonable figures for value or other data elements.

But AES was meant to do much more.

Some 40 government agencies, as diverse as the Fish and Wildlife Service, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Maritime Administration, have some jurisdiction over exports. In most cases those agencies only accept hard-copy documentation from companies exporting goods they're responsible for.

When AES was first being sold to the trade community in 1991, the promise was that it would bring that process into the electronic age.

AES would be a single electronic gateway for exporters to interact with the federal bureaucracy...

AES has not lived up to that promise. The system didn't go live at test ports until 1995. And — even though it did reduce the time and expense of filing the Shipper Export Declarations — few exporters used the system because it required the shipper to comply with an outdated regulation that all SED's be filed before the shipment left the country....

For AES, the stumbling block over pre-departure filing for exports was solved last year when Customs and Census agreed to allow post-departure filing on many shipments. Since then, the use of AES has begun to rise ...

But the vision of AES as a one-stop shop for exporters to interact with the federal government remains unfulfilled.

Only the State and Commerce department agencies involved with exports are linked into AES, and the State Department tie-in is on line only a four ports. Other agencies have balked, not wanting to be dependent on Customs, which runs the AES computer.

Thanks to the China crisis, however, that may soon change. According to officials who have seen draft copies of the inspector-general reports, AES is specifically identified as a platform to rapidly disseminate information to the export-regulating agencies. Customs understands other agencies' concerns and is apparently prepared to work with them....

Officials are reassuring exporters who may be concerned that more enforcement will result in disruption and delays....