Overseas cargo scanning meets EU, business opposition

Source: Exec Digital USA

Date :5/25/2007 4:11:47 AM

BIFA, the British Internatinal Freight Association, reports that European Union and US business groups have written to US lawmakers asking them to scrap proposed homeland security rules.

These rules that would scan all overseas cargo containers - a move traders say would raise costs and lead to job losses on both sides of the Atlantic.

"These provisions threaten to disrupt the global flow of trade and would impose costly mandates on trans Atlantic business without providing additional security," said BusinessEurope and the US Chamber of Commerce in a joint letter to the chairs of US Congress's Senate Committee Homeland Security and the House Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.

The business federations are the world's two largest, representing millions of companies responsible for the vast majority of trans-Atlantic trade and employing up to 14 million people.

They said the requirement to scan and seal all the 11-12 million maritime containers sent from European ports to the United States would impose considerable costs and hassle on international businesses and would lead to significant delays.

"Ultimately these costs would be passed on to US consumers in the form of higher prices for all imported goods," the letter said, claiming that the deadline to implement the rules within three to five years was unrealistic.

They warned that other nations may retaliate with stricter rules of their own.

"Our organizations are very concerned that the United States, by unilaterally imposing 100 percent scanning and sealing requirement on its trading partners, would invite other countries, including the EU, to impose reciprocal requirements on American exports," it said.

The new provisions would undermine existing customs security efforts based on risk analysis and targeted inspections and takes no account of businesses' own checks, it said.

The European Union and the United States are each other's main trading partners, sending around Euro1.7 billion (US$2.3 billion) worth of goods, services and investments across the Atlantic each day.

May 22 2007