Principal Investigator: Adam Rose
Other Researchers: Charles Baschnagel, Adam Rose, Isaac Maya
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has begun transforming our country’s systems and processes to suit the 21st Century international trade environment. The vision for the future focuses on leveraging these improvements to stamp out unfair trade practices, while reducing the costs associated with both importing and exporting goods. By continuing to find efficiencies and expanding our international footprint, CBP can deliver a pathway that meets the demands of a complex and ever-changing trade environment. This is accomplished by highlighting CBP’s role in supporting a prosperous U.S. economy, creating partnerships with the trade community and international partners, and ensuring predictability for the trade community. The study discussed below is a proposed continuation and expansion of CREATE’s Phase 1 effort of examining the economic impact of CBP’s Centers of Excellence and Expertise (CEE). Background CBP’s trade enforcement efforts provide a myriad of benefits to the U.S. trade community, U.S. government, and U.S. macro-economy. CBP is a truly unique agency within the Federal law enforcement community because of its dual role as both an enabler and a regulator of international trade. Securing and interdicting unlawful cargo and enabling the swift movement of legitimate trade are mutually dependent activities and CBP’s focus and strategic approaches to enable lawful trade shape and support its enforcement efforts. Enforcing U.S. trade laws and international trade agreements at the border protects the economy, our national security and the safety of the American people by protecting against counterfeit and unsafe goods, disease and plant pests, and financial schemes that defraud the U.S. government of lawfully owed revenue and undermine lawful business. Building upon the outcomes from CBP’s efforts to enable legitimate trade, CBP’s trade enforcement efforts seek to better identify, detect, and interdict high-risk shipments through collaborative partnerships with the private sector, advanced technology, and integrated enforcement capabilities.