You’ve heard of DTrade. You’ve been to SNAP-R. Now get ready to experience a whole new system for submitting export licenses online … USXPORTS.
In recent meeting minutes published by the Defense Trade Advisory Group (DTAG), the Assistant Secretary for Political Military Affairs, Andrew Shapiro, announced the migration of all current export license processing systems to a single platform – USXPORTS. (This platform actually isn’t “new,” except to those of us who’ve been using the DDTC and BIS systems for licenses. USXPORTS was developed several years ago by the Department of Defense to help reduce its own reliance on paper copies in the export process.)
Earlier this year, when the new export reforms were announced, speculation started to run about which online licensing system would be used. Everyone seemed to wonder if DTrade or SNAP-R would win the day. Turns out, they’ve both been sidelined by a third choice – USXPORTS.
No one seems to know much about this new system. Will it be easier (or more difficult) than the current platforms? How similar is it to SNAP-R and DTrade? Certainly for exporters of both ITAR and EAR items, it will be a nice change to have one system to interface with the government and manage all of your license applications. Right? I suppose so … unless that system is more cumbersome and less “user friendly” than its counterparts. In which case, I can only imagine all the user manuals, dozens of FAQs and online tutorials that will be required to bring folks up to speed.
Only time will tell, of course. Until then, everyone give a nice, warm U.S. exporter welcome to … USXPORTS.
(P.S. – Is that an acronym? Like SNAP-R? I think so! It stands for “U.S. Export Systems.” Clever. I think I’ll start calling our company “EXSOLS.” TTYL!)
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Tom Reynolds is the President of Export Solutions, a consultancy firm which specializes in helping companies with import/export compliance.