On Friday, June 16, the President of the International Academy of Customs Law, Andrés Rodhe Ponce, and the National Director of Customs, Alejandra Arriaza, gave a keynote lecture in Santiago, the capital and main city of Chile.
The conference focused on “Customs Challenges in the New Scenario of Global Trade”; the event was organized by the Andrés Bello University and the Chilean Institute of International Trade (ICHI).
Customs News attended the event online. During the opening remarks, the Director of Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Law of the Andrés Bello University, Carlos del Rio Ferretti, highlighted the work carried out by the Faculty of Law and referred to Customs Law as a “boosting tool” for first-rate international trade; he also considered that there are other relevant values that deserve to be analyzed.
That vision was shared by ICHI Deputy Secretary General, Paola Feliu Azzar, He also valued the importance of both the study and the debate on Customs Law and International Trade. He argued that “in an increasingly interconnected world, it is essential to consider how customs can respond to the demands of the new era.”
In view of this, Carolina Correa, Director of the Customs Law Diploma at Andrés Bello University, introduced the lawyer, consultant and professor Andrés Rodhe Ponce and the National Director of Customs, Alejandra Arriaza, who took office on August 19, 2022, after a competition for senior public management in the Chilean civil service.
The customs colloquium was opened in this atmosphere of openness and exchange between the government and private actors.
Customs Challenges
At the exhibition, the President of the International Academy of Customs Law, Andrés Rohde Ponce, referred to the History of Customs, whose birth appears to be linked to the control of external traffic and the tax power over goods that cross borders. In etymology it is thought that the word "door" means customs and that the word customs comes from "door", he said.
In this historical line, he explained that "customs" are also presented as a manifestation of the exercise of State sovereignty that takes place at the borders to protect the "national territory."
In addition to this role of control, Rodhe referred to the functions of collecting customs duties; he also noted that customs enforces prohibitions on imports and exports.
He recalled that with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed in 1947, governments seek to prevent customs activity from unjustifiably hindering trade. Thus, Article VIII recognises the need to "reduce to a minimum the effects and complexity of import and export formalities and reduce and simplify the requirements relating to the documents required for import and export." This implies approaching the role of customs from a new perspective: that of facilitating international trade, which, when it came into force with the Ministerial Conference in Singapore in 1996, "commits us all," he said.
In this context, Rodhe referred to the challenges that customs must face in light of the new international reality established following the attack carried out on September 11, 2001 in the United States, the appearance of El Niño, tsunamis, the Covid-19 pandemic, that is, following a series of “global shocks”.
In light of this, Rodhe raised the issue of whether the GATT customs model can withstand “global shocks.” Added to this is the need for customs to control fake trade. This leads to the assignment of new functions to customs, which are obliged to take on a crucial role in the security of international merchandise traffic. So, how do customs facilitate trade and how do they control what the State is allowing them to control?
“Reconciling security with trade facilitation is the challenge for customs,” he concluded.
Given this scenario, Fabian Villarroel Rios, President of ICHI, asked how the role of customs can be envisioned in light of the danger of a new fragmentation of the world, deglobalization and decoupling.
Then Alejandra Arriaza, National Director of Customs He stated that “the challenge for customs is to make the logistics chain safer.” He explained that it is about providing security to the so-called logistics chain, which covers everything from the producer to the consumer, as well as dealing with concepts related to “organized crime or illicit association.” This implies working in the most coordinated way possible and collaborating closely with all the control agencies and the private sector related to foreign trade and the transit of people.
In this regard, Arriaza stressed the importance of developing “a global and coordinated view of the borders.”
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