WASHINGTON (Mar. 12, 2025) – U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) introduced the Customs Facilitation Act of 2025 to modernize U.S. customs laws and streamline the movement of goods and services across our borders.
“Trade done right has the ability to create more jobs in the United States and lower the price of goods that we purchase,” said Dr. Cassidy. “Whether this happens depends upon how well we process information about the goods entering our country. This legislation modernizes the laws and streamlines the movement of goods and services going in and out of our country in a way that benefits all of us.”
“Moving goods through America’s ports creates jobs and lowers costs for everyday Americans, but red tape and complicated reporting requirements are making the process of doing so too inefficient,” said Senator Cortez Masto. “The Customs Facilitation Act makes common sense changes to streamline customs procedures and reduce the regulatory burden on American businesses.”
Right now, the entry of goods across our borders is fragmented, costly, slow, and requires redundant data entries across the U.S. government. For instance, importing something as simple as a can of wet pet food is an arduous and redundant task requiring 54 data elements to be submitted to three separate partner government agencies—the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—with 21 redundant data elements and 16 inconsistent definitions of the same data.
The Customs Facilitation Act of 2025 would:
- Create a real One U.S. Government at the Border through a workable one-stop-shop for data entry and decision-making.
- Streamline data requirements by providing parameters to ensure the government is receiving the data it needs without overly burdening the trade industry.
- Simplify the duty drawback process.
- Update the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) webpage, the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism Trade Compliance Handbook, and the accessibility of Customs representatives to improve information sharing.
- Encourage more timely responses to trade actions and requests from U.S. government agencies.
- Streamline the export process and ensure that clerical errors are not penalized.
- Authorize the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study to examine the U.S. Customs and Border Protection fee structure and make appropriate recommendations to Congress.
- Provide enhancements to Centers of Excellence and Expertise.
Click here for the full bill text and here for the one-pager.
Background
In July, Cassidy released a discussion draft of the Customs Facilitation Act of 2024. The discussion draft came after Cassidy released a framework of the proposal the previous month and sent a request for information in June 2023.
Last year, Cassidy introduced the Customs Modernization Act to give CBP visibility into international supply chains to resolve data collection constraints, expand the legal use of trade data, increase supply chain accountability, improve enforcement effectiveness, and bolster information sharing among government agencies. Cassidy also introduced the Manifest Modernization Act to improve the transparency of shipments coming into the U.S. by standardizing the data requirements for imports regardless of how the cargo is shipped. The bill aims to give CBP another tool to stop the trafficking of drugs and illegal goods.
