THE VIGILANT VIGIL – 34th EDITION

Welcome, visitor, to the Vigil. Here you will find a summation of current global trade changes and regulatory updates. We aim to deliver helpful insights in a timely and relevant manner, to help you remain vigilant in an ever-evolving trade environment.

 

Vigil Viewpoint:

THE ART OF COMPLIANCE

Or why I keep painting myself into regulatory corners.

I have a confession. I am an artist who works in global trade compliance because somebody has to pay for the paint.

I’ve said some variation of that in almost every presentation I’ve given at ICPA and other trade conferences. While it’s intended to get a laugh, there is a considerable amount of truth behind it. I have two great professional passions: creating art and navigating the extraordinarily complicated, occasionally infuriating, and endlessly fascinating world of international trade. At first glance, these might seem like rather incompatible pursuits, but I’ve increasingly come to appreciate just how much they have in common.

This week, those two worlds have been competing rather aggressively for my attention. Between my responsibilities at Vigilant and Trabex, keeping up with the seemingly endless parade of regulatory changes, and supporting our clients, I’ve also had paintings in a group exhibition at a Phoenix gallery (where I was delighted to sell a few pieces!) and have been frantically creating new work for a large Halloween Queer Market this Saturday. During the day, I’m contemplating tariff classifications, export controls, customs valuation, and reasonable care. In the evenings, I’m staring at canvases, mixing paints, experimenting with mediums, and trying to decide whether the composition needs another layer of color or whether I’ve already ruined the thing.

Somewhere between the spreadsheets and the turpentine, it occurred to me that creating a painting and creating a defensible trade compliance program have an awful lot in common. Both require vision, planning, technical knowledge, appropriate materials, careful execution, and a willingness to make adjustments when the original concept doesn’t quite work. Both can be enormously satisfying when everything comes together, and both can be spectacularly frustrating when the finished product bears little resemblance to what we intended.

The Blank Canvas

Every painting begins with an idea or a vision of something you want to communicate or create. You gather your materials: canvas, brushes, pigments, linseed oil, turpentine, perhaps some specialty mediums. You consider the composition, the techniques you’ll use, and what you hope the finished work will accomplish. There are countless decisions to make before the first brushstroke, and those decisions will influence everything that follows.

Developing a trade compliance program, establishing a product classification, evaluating a supplier, or preparing an import or export transaction follows a remarkably similar process. We begin with an objective, gather information, establish requirements, select appropriate tools, identify the people involved, and develop a process that will produce a particular result. Our materials might be engineering specifications, supplier declarations, commercial invoices, purchase orders, HTS provisions, ECCNs, regulatory guidance, and supporting documentation. Instead of brushes and pigments, we use research, analysis, professional judgment, and increasingly sophisticated technology to assemble our composition.

Of course, having all the right materials doesn’t guarantee a masterpiece. I’ve produced enough artistic disasters to know that firsthand, and I’ve encountered more than a few compliance programs that contained all the necessary ingredients but somehow managed to produce a rather questionable finished product. The challenge in both disciplines is understanding how the individual components work together and whether the result actually accomplishes the intended objective.

Unlike a painting that eventually dries and finds its place on a gallery wall, however, a trade compliance program is rarely a finished composition. The regulatory environment continues to evolve, sometimes requiring us to revisit decisions we thought were settled. Just look at the developments highlighted in this week’s Vigil: changes to international postal entry requirements, new sanctions-related measures involving Russia and Iran, evolving Canadian sanctions guidance, and ongoing antidumping and countervailing duty proceedings. Each development may require us to reconsider existing processes, review assumptions, update systems, or incorporate new controls. In artistic terms, the government keeps changing the assignment while we’re still working on the canvas. Our challenge is to maintain a coherent composition while continually adapting to new requirements.

Sometimes You Have to Take Something Away

Painting is often an additive process. We build layers of pigment, texture, color, and detail until the image begins to emerge. However, some of the most important artistic decisions are subtractive. Sometimes we need to remove paint, soften an edge, eliminate a distracting element, or use negative space to give the composition room to breathe. Turpentine and other mediums can be just as important as the paint itself, and occasionally the best thing we can do for a painting is stop adding things to it.

Trade compliance works much the same way. We spend enormous amounts of time gathering information, adding controls, incorporating data, establishing procedures, and building increasingly sophisticated systems. Yet sometimes the most important compliance decision involves determining what doesn’t belong. Perhaps it’s an incorrect Chapter 99 provision, an unsupported preferential duty claim, an inappropriate license exception, an unverified supplier statement, or a data element carried forward from a previous transaction without anyone questioning whether it still applies.

Sometimes we need to remove an assumption, correct an error, or strip away unnecessary complexity before the true picture becomes clear. That doesn’t mean removing inconvenient evidence or concealing a problem; quite the opposite. It means recognizing that erroneous information, unsupported conclusions, and unnecessary procedural clutter can obscure the facts we actually need to understand. More information doesn’t automatically mean better compliance, just as more paint doesn’t automatically mean better art. The skill lies in knowing what to add, what to remove, and what to preserve as part of the record.

Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background

One of the fundamentals of good artistic composition is understanding how the foreground, middle ground, and background work together. Those relationships create depth, context, and a sense of completeness. An otherwise technically excellent painting can feel flat or confusing when those elements aren’t properly considered. The viewer needs to understand not only what is immediately visible but also how the surrounding elements contribute to the overall image.

I think the same principle applies beautifully to trade compliance. The background consists of everything that happened before the transaction: product development, supplier qualification, sourcing decisions, classification research, origin determinations, contracts, screening, and the information gathered to support those decisions. The middle ground is the transaction itself, including commercial documents, shipment details, declarations, filings, licensing decisions, and the regulatory requirements that must be satisfied at the time of import or export. The foreground represents what happens afterward: recordkeeping, post-entry audits, reconciliation, corrective actions, ongoing screening, regulatory changes, and the ability to demonstrate that the original decisions were reasonable and properly supported.

If we focus exclusively on the shipment and ignore everything that came before or after it, we’re presenting only part of the picture. A customs entry may be perfectly formatted and transmitted without error, but that doesn’t establish whether the classification was correct, the origin was properly determined, or the declared value accounted for all required elements. Likewise, an export filing may be technically complete while the underlying end-use evaluation or licensing determination remains inadequately supported.

When CBP, BIS, OFAC, or another regulatory authority comes asking questions, we need to be able to show them the complete composition, not merely the attractive portion we decided to frame. The underlying research, contemporaneous decisions, supporting documentation, and subsequent actions all contribute to whether the finished work is defensible.

The Most Expensive D I Ever Earned

Which brings me to one of my favorite, and at the time most devastating, memories from art school. As a student, I generally did quite well. I was proud of my technical abilities, received good grades, and occasionally thought I was rather talented. Modesty has always been one of my more challenging artistic disciplines.

One assignment required us to study and interpret the work of another artist. I chose the figure of God from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. I worked meticulously on my drawing, studying the original image, recreating the forms, and paying close attention to the technical details. When I finished, I thought it was magnificent. In fact, to this day, it remains one of the drawings I’m most proud of, and I submitted it fully expecting an excellent grade.

Instead, I received a D. A D! I was absolutely devastated, particularly because my instructor acknowledged the technical skill involved. The problem wasn’t that I had executed the drawing poorly. The problem was that I had failed to follow the assignment. We weren’t supposed to simply reproduce another artist’s work. We were supposed to interpret it, incorporate our own creative perspective, and transform the original into something that reflected our individual artistic vision. I had been so focused on faithfully reproducing Michelangelo’s masterpiece that I completely missed the requirement to make it my own.

I had created what I believed was a technically perfect drawing, but it was the wrong deliverable. Looking back, I can see why the grade was justified, although I assure you that my younger self was considerably less receptive to that conclusion.

How often do we create what we believe is the perfect classification analysis, shipment, supplier review, or compliance policy, only to discover that we’ve misunderstood a fundamental requirement? We gather the information, follow our established process, produce a beautiful document, and congratulate ourselves on a job well done. But did we actually answer the question the regulation asked? Did we evaluate the correct criteria, apply the appropriate legal standard, and understand what the government expected us to demonstrate?

Technical excellence is important, but technical excellence applied to the wrong requirements can still earn you a D. Unfortunately, unlike art school, the government doesn’t necessarily stop at assigning a disappointing grade. An incorrect compliance conclusion may result in additional duties, delayed shipments, lost privileges, penalties, or other consequences depending on the circumstances.

This week’s Trade Buzz discussion about C-TPAT provides another excellent example. A company can spend months developing an impressive supply chain security manual, complete with detailed procedures, training requirements, business partner assessments, and beautifully formatted documentation. But if employees aren’t actually performing the required inspections, security procedures aren’t being followed, or corrective actions are never completed, the organization has essentially created a beautiful drawing that failed to satisfy the assignment. CBP isn’t simply interested in whether a company can produce an attractive security policy; it wants participating companies to demonstrate that their security controls are implemented, maintained, and effective. Much like my Michelangelo drawing, the technical quality of the document means very little if the actual objective has been missed.

Everybody’s a Critic

One of my least favorite parts of art school was critique day. We would arrange our artwork around the classroom, often in a large circle, and then walk from piece to piece while the instructor and fellow students discussed what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved. Our instructor would offer an assessment, and other students were expected to contribute praise, criticism, or recommendations. It was educational, valuable, and occasionally absolutely brutal.

Sometimes you’d present a piece you adored, something into which you’d poured hours of effort and emotional energy, only to discover that your instructor and classmates were considerably less enthusiastic. Other times, you’d reluctantly hang a drawing or painting you considered a complete disaster and listen in astonishment as everyone praised its composition, originality, or emotional impact. I hated having my work dissected in front of everyone, even though I understood that critique was an essential part of becoming a better artist. Frankly, I still don’t particularly enjoy it, despite being considerably older and supposedly more mature.

Artistic critique is a fascinating exercise in perspective. The creator’s intentions, the viewer’s interpretation, and the standards being applied don’t always align. Something that seems perfectly logical and successful to the artist may be interpreted quite differently by someone encountering the work for the first time. Conversely, an element the artist considers a mistake may turn out to be the very thing that makes the composition interesting.

This brings us to one of the more uncomfortable realities of global trade compliance: reasonable care and due diligence aren’t always defined with the precision we might prefer. The government establishes laws, regulations, standards, and expectations. Sometimes those requirements are quite specific, while other times we’re given broad principles, evolving guidance, or ambiguous instructions and expected to determine what an appropriate compliance process should look like.

We research, interpret, build controls, document our reasoning, and make decisions based on the information and guidance available at the time. Then, sometimes years later, comes the critique in the form of a CBP inquiry, a regulatory audit, an enforcement action, an administrative ruling, or perhaps litigation that ultimately helps clarify the applicable requirement. Much like an artist awaiting a review, we may believe we’ve created something thoughtful, technically sound, and entirely defensible, only to discover that the reviewer sees something different.

Of course, regulatory compliance isn’t simply a matter of personal taste. Legal requirements, evidence, established standards, and procedural protections matter enormously. However, where the law leaves room for interpretation, professional judgment becomes an essential part of the composition. Sometimes we don’t receive meaningful clarification until long after we’ve been required to make the decision, and that uncertainty is one of the reasons documenting our research, assumptions, and reasoning is so important.

When the Critics Don’t Quite Know What to Think

I was fortunate to study with Beverly McIver, an extraordinary artist, former professor, and friend whose work has profoundly influenced how I think about art. Beverly’s paintings explore identity, race, gender, family, and deeply personal psychological experiences. Her work has challenged audiences, confronted uncomfortable subjects, and pushed against conventional expectations of what art should look like or communicate.

Today, Beverly’s work is celebrated in major museums and galleries, and she has received significant recognition for her contributions to contemporary art. But artistic recognition doesn’t necessarily arrive immediately, and unconventional work can take time to find its audience. I remember the practical realities of being a working artist, including the need to produce smaller, commercially accessible works, such as still lifes of fruits and other familiar subjects, to help fund the more ambitious and deeply personal work that truly drives an artist’s creative vision.

What interests me about Beverly’s career is not simply that she became successful, but that she pursued subject matter and a visual language that were deeply meaningful to her, even when those choices challenged conventional expectations. The artistic community, like any other professional community, develops preferences, standards, and assumptions about what constitutes important work. Sometimes those expectations evolve as artists continue to challenge them and audiences develop a greater appreciation for what they’re trying to communicate.

There’s an interesting parallel with the evolution of trade compliance. New regulatory approaches, emerging technologies, unconventional compliance methodologies, and creative interpretations of complex requirements can initially encounter skepticism. Sometimes that skepticism is entirely justified, particularly when a proposed approach lacks adequate legal support or introduces unnecessary risk. Other times, an approach simply challenges established thinking or introduces capabilities that existing practices haven’t yet accommodated.

Over time, additional guidance, regulatory decisions, enforcement experience, and judicial interpretation may help establish which approaches are acceptable and which are not. The lesson isn’t that we should ignore the rules and hope regulators eventually appreciate our genius. I strongly discourage that particular strategy. Rather, innovation requires creativity, but sustainable innovation also requires discipline, evidence, and an understanding of the standards against which our work will be evaluated.

Artistic License Has Its Limits

Here’s the delicious irony of my two professional worlds. Art often celebrates breaking the rules, while trade compliance is largely about making sure we follow them. Artists challenge convention, distort reality, experiment with materials, and deliberately disregard established techniques to create something original. Trade professionals, on the other hand, must operate within legal and regulatory boundaries. We don’t get to invent a new country of origin because the existing one is inconvenient, or reinterpret a tariff provision simply because the alternative would make the quarterly financials look more attractive.

But that doesn’t mean compliance should be devoid of creativity. Quite the opposite. Some of the most effective compliance solutions I’ve encountered required extraordinary imagination: finding lawful ways to structure complex supply chains, developing practical controls for ambiguous requirements, designing efficient workflows, leveraging new technology, and creating processes that allow businesses to operate competitively without sacrificing compliance.

A good trade professional must understand the rules well enough to recognize both the restrictions and the opportunities they create. There may be multiple legitimate ways to accomplish a business objective, and identifying the most efficient, practical, and defensible approach often requires precisely the kind of creative thinking we associate with artists and designers. The creativity isn’t in breaking the rules; it’s in finding innovative ways to accomplish business objectives while respecting them.

That’s where the artist and the trade professional in me find common ground. Both disciplines require us to balance vision with execution, creativity with technical skill, and individual judgment with established standards. Both benefit from experimentation, thoughtful critique, and a willingness to revise our work when new information reveals a better approach.

And Yes, I Still Need to Pay for Paint

People occasionally ask when I plan to retire. My answer is that I probably never will, at least not in the conventional sense. My ambition is to reach a point where I have enough financial security to maintain a home, a gallery, and a studio, and spend the rest of my life drawing, painting, and creating whatever happens to capture my imagination. I fully expect to die with a paintbrush or pencil in my hand, although given some of the chemicals I’ve worked with over the years, I suppose I should be careful about how literally I phrase that ambition. 😂

But I don’t see my love of art and my passion for global trade as competing interests. They inform one another in ways I probably didn’t fully appreciate earlier in my career. Art has taught me to observe carefully, question assumptions, think creatively, accept criticism even when I absolutely hate it, and recognize that sometimes the best solution involves removing something rather than adding more. Trade compliance has taught me discipline, research, documentation, analytical thinking, and the importance of understanding the requirements before declaring something finished.

Even my interests in acting, singing, and musical theater have found their way into my professional life. Give me a microphone, a conference audience, or the ICPA Voices of Compliance Choir, and I’m generally a happy person. Those experiences have helped me become a more comfortable presenter, a better communicator, and perhaps a little more willing to approach serious professional topics with humor and personality.

We all bring something beyond our job descriptions to the work we do. Some of you are athletes, gardeners, musicians, cooks, hunters, collectors, writers, or travelers. Others may genuinely consider tariff classification their greatest recreational passion, and I say that with only the slightest amount of judgment. Our interests outside work can influence how we solve problems, collaborate with colleagues, respond to criticism, and approach challenges that don’t have obvious answers.

I’d genuinely love to hear how your personal passions influence your professional lives. What have your hobbies, creative pursuits, or outside interests taught you about solving problems, leading people, or navigating the complexities of global trade? I increasingly believe that some of the most valuable skills we bring to compliance aren’t necessarily learned in a compliance classroom. Sometimes they’re learned in an art studio, on a stage, in a garden, or while doing something we love simply because it brings us joy.

As for that Michelangelo drawing that earned me a D, I still love it. I still think it’s beautiful, and I’m still proud of the technical execution. But after all these years, I finally appreciate what my instructor was trying to teach me. The assignment wasn’t about proving that I could reproduce a masterpiece; it was about demonstrating that I understood the objective and could apply my own creativity to achieve it. I had mastered the technique but missed the requirement, which is a lesson I’ve carried with me into my professional life.

Whether we’re creating a painting, developing a compliance program, or preparing a complex international transaction, we need to understand the objective, gather the right materials, build a complete composition, invite thoughtful critique, and make corrections when necessary. Creativity and technical excellence are valuable, but neither substitutes for understanding what we’re actually supposed to accomplish. And unlike a finished painting, our compliance compositions must continue evolving as regulations change, business relationships develop, and new risks emerge. The challenge is not simply to create something defensible today, but to establish processes that can adapt and remain effective tomorrow.

This week’s Vigil provides several reminders of just how dynamic that environment has become. From changes to postal entry requirements and developments in sanctions and trade remedies to evolving guidance on ownership and the practical realities of C-TPAT security programs, there is no shortage of new material demanding our attention. Each development may require us to reconsider a decision, add a control, remove an outdated assumption, or take a fresh look at the composition we’ve already created. And while I will always encourage a little artistic license in the studio, I would strongly recommend being considerably more careful when it comes to an export license. Those are two very different things, and I suspect BIS would be rather less appreciative of my creative interpretation than my art professor.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some paintings to finish, a market to prepare for, and approximately seventeen regulatory developments demanding my attention. Apparently, neither art nor global trade believes in taking the weekend off. I hope this week’s Vigil inspires you to look at your own compliance programs with a slightly more creative eye, while remembering that even the most beautiful composition needs to meet the requirements.

Let’s veer into this week’s Vigil, shall we?

 

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In this volume, we will explore:

• Updates to the Federal Register, for both policy and product
• Cooperative call outs to other blogs
• Where to find us
• Be sure to check out our weekly edition of Trade Buzz

**The following contains links and citations from multiple US government agencies and other credible sources. Vigilant GTS LLC is not the source material but simply compilating the information.**

 

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Federal Register Updates

**These are just a sampling of the many updates and changes made by the Federal Register. For a more comprehensive list, or to subscribe to the updates yourself, follow the link below, and never miss a thing.**

https://www.federalregister.gov

 

Rules

Indefinite Suspension of the De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments and New Postal Informal Entry Process; Delayed Compliance Extension

FR Document: 2026-21600 Citation: 91 FR 66638

PDF Pages 66638-66640 (3 pages) Permalink

Abstract: This document announces that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will extend the compliance date for the regulatory provisions mandating the formal entry of merchandise arriving through the international postal network that is subject to partner government agency requirements, subject to duties under Chapter 98 or Chapter 99 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS), or for which duty-free treatment is claimed under Chapter 98 of the HTSUS or pursuant to a Free Trade…

 

Executive Orders

Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026; Implementation (EO 14436)

FR Document: 2026-21599 Citation: 91 FR 66627

PDF Pages 66627-66630 (4 pages) Permalink

Abstract:  Section 115 of the Graham Act authorizes the President to waive the application of any sanctions provision with respect to a foreign person, any restriction with respect to a person, and any duty under the Graham Act, subject to the submission to the Congress of a written certification that such a waiver is in the national interests of the United States and a report explaining the basis for the certification.

 

Antidumping or Countervailing Duty Investigations, Orders, or Reviews:

Certain Linear Hydraulic Cylinders and Parts Thereof from the People’s Republic of China, India, and Mexico

FR Document: 2026-21452 Citation: 91 FR 66294	PDF Pages 66294-66295 (2 pages) Permalink
Abstract: [Not available]

 

Dioctyl Terephthalate from Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, and the Republic of Turkiye; Correction

FR Document: 2026-21457 Citation: 91 FR 66295

PDF Page 66295 (1 page) Permalink

Abstract: The U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) published notice in the Federal Register of May 22, 2025, in which Commerce issued the antidumping duty (AD) orders on dioctyl terephthalate (DOTP) from Malaysia, Poland, Taiwan, and the Republic of T[uuml]rkiye (T[uuml]rkiye). The notice incorrectly stated the dates of the ending of provisional measures and the termination of suspension of liquidation due to the expiration of provisional measures.

 

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News from other esteemed sources:

  

THOMPSON/HINE

CBP Delays Implementation Date of De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments

By Scott E. Diamond**, David M. Schwartz, Samir D. Varma & Francesca M.S. Guerrero on October 15, 2026

On October 14, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced the extension of the compliance date for new informal entry procedures for international mail from October 22, 2026, to January 20, 2027.

CBP Delays Implementation Date of De Minimis Exemption for Mail Shipments | SmarTrade

 

 

BAKER/MCKENZIE

Canada Issues New Guidance on Deemed Ownership Under Its Economic Sanctions Regime
10/19/2026
Global Affairs Canada (GAC) published new guidance clarifying the application of the deemed ownership provisions under Canada’s economic sanctions legislation. The guidance, updated on 13 October 2026, addresses the thresholds for establishing…
Read more…

 

OFAC Designates the International Criminal Court and Issues Four Related General Licenses
10/21/2026
On October 9, 2026, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC“) added the entire International Criminal Court (“ICC“) to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List…
Read more…

 

 

CSIS/TRADE GUYS

U.S.-Russia Diesel Deal, Europe-China Hybrid Vehicle Agreement, and Tariff Refunds

Bill and Scott discuss the Trump administration’s new diesel deal with Russia, examine a new agreement between Europe and China to limit Chinese hybrid vehicle exports, and unpack the latest court ruling on refunds for the overturned emergency tariffs.

U.S.-Russia Diesel Deal, Europe-China Hybrid Vehicle Agreement, and Tariff Refunds | The Trade Guys | CSIS Podcasts

 

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Vigilant Visitation Opportunities

We will be out and about at different trade and compliance related conferences around the country! We would love for you to come to say hello, so we can get to know you better! You can also connect with us at: https://vigilantgts.com/ or through our socials, on Facebook and LinkedIn!

  

Where we will be:

 

ICPA Annual Spring Conference, March 7 – March 10, 2027

Orlando, Florida, USA

This will be the 25^th Anniversary Event for ICPA.

Jamie Adams will be presenting on “Networking for Career Development” and leading the Voices of Compliance Choir in multiple performances.

 

ICPA Global Trade Insights Conference, April 7 – April 8, 2027

Wembley, England

Jamie Adams will be presenting and also leading the choir.

 

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TRADE BUZZ – Powered by Vigilant GTS

 

Trade never stands still—and neither do we.

Every Tuesday, we publish a new Trade Buzz episode highlighting timely developments in customs, tariffs, export controls, sanctions, compliance, and global trade. Our goal is simple: provide practical, easy-to-understand insights that help you stay informed and prepared.

This week’s topic: C-TPAT (Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism) is about more than having written security policies and procedures. Effective supply chain security means putting those policies into practice through employee training, business partner assessments, physical security measures, documented inspections, and ongoing monitoring. Regular audits, corrective actions, and supporting records help demonstrate that security controls are consistently followed and that an organization’s commitment to protecting its supply chain extends beyond the paperwork.

🎥 Watch the latest Trade Buzz and read more:

https://vigilantgts.com/turn-policies-into-proven-protection-hb/

 

Missed a previous episode? Browse the complete Trade Buzz library at:
https://vigilantgts.com/blog/