Feeling The Homeland Security Pinch
Recently we've been having all sorts of problems at work with customer shipments from our plant in Mexico getting into the United States. Customs has held a number of our trucks for up to weeks at a time in El Paso and have caused our customer delivery service levels to plummet. Two Customs agents flew in from Washington to discuss the issues with our general manager here in Minneapolis in person since we didn't have "secure" phone lines.
Apparently now that the U.S. Customs Service is part of the D.O.H.S. (Homer could be their mascot) their emphasis has shifted from trade to security. Which is all fine and good except that a signification chunk of our economy has come to depend on the relatively easy and free trade passing between the U.S and Mexico and Canada and imposing undue restrictions on that trade is not what the economy needs right now.
After many go rounds and haggling with various bureaucrats we finally seem to have found the crux of the problem that Customs has with us. They don't understand what our product is or how it works. The products in question are flow meters, which in their simplest sense are instrumentation devices designed to measure flow through pipes in industrial applications (paper mills, chemical plants, food & beverage processing, etc). One of our senior engineers will be traveling to El Paso next week to give a presentation to the Customs agents stationed there explaining how our products work and in what applications they might be used. It is hoped that this will be enough to allow us to avoid any future delays in shipments.
I fear however that we will not be the last company to be "busted" if Customs continues to follow their new criteria of "if we don't know what it is it doesn't get in". If Customs agents are anything like typical government employees the only products that won't be held up are big screen TVs, beer, and nacho cheese flavored Doritos. Perhaps that Homer as mascot idea isn't quite so far fetched.
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