U.S., Canada Preparing Report on Border Fees

One of the Beyond the Border Action Plan initiative's commitment is to “bring greater public transparency and accountability to the application of border fees and charges, with a view to reducing costs to business and promoting trade competitiveness.”

As a first step towards fulfilling this commitment, the governments of the United States and Canada have each developed inventories of mandatory, trade-related fees charged by either federal government on the movement of goods across the Canada-U.S. border.

For the 2010-2011 fiscal period Canada collected $34,191,797 in fees, and the U.S. $230,200,384. That was 0.017% of all imports for Canada, and 0.077% for the U.S.

This report is available at http://cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/newsroom/highlights/border_fee_inventory.ctt/border_fee_inventory.pdf.

The governments of the United States and Canada are now moving forward with the next phase of this Beyond the Border Action Plan initiative: commissioning a third party contractor to conduct an economic impact assessment of border fees and then publishing a joint report on border fees. It is expected that this work will be completed by spring 2014.