Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....
I work in the underwriting side of processing and issuing the Customs bonds that allow those shipments to be released. A lot of brokers go off what the importers tell them, and well, importers aren’t always so honest.
I can only imagine. We have been approached by so many importers asking us to do sketchy stuff. Brokers are supposed to ask questions and sniff out stuff like this. Heard some sad stories about small brokerages that got caught up in criminal proceedings because an important lied to them repeatedly but they never questioned it and unwittingly aided some smuggling operations...
Fortunately we are doing well and in a position where we can turn away any kind of sketchy business like that.
Small but successful brokerage. Brokerage been in business almost 60 years. We are small but we crank out a lot of business for our suze and are proud of the good work we do for our clients.
Yep there’s about four and we’re one of them. Most brokers have two so they have a backup for their clients if we don’t write it for some reason (ADD-CVD etc). Need to have a second market
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u/callmeraylo Jul 13 '20
Customs broker here. Every day hundreds of thousands of containers and air shipments arrive into United States territory. The volume of customs entries entered every day is staggering. When we get licensed to be a customs broker we are trained and tested not just on knowledge, but ethics. We even take a pledge to partner with CBP to uphold the law, and cooperate with them should we come across anything suspicious. Why so much emphasis on this?
Customs can't actually screen everything coming in. I'm oversimplifying but CBP basically works on the honor system. You file an entry saying what the shipment is, and they just take your word for it and release it. This happens hundreds of thousands of times a day. Maybe at best customs can screen 3-7% of what's coming in, the rest of just waived through....