CBP Regulations: Maersk’s 2026 Strategy

Trying to work through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rulebook is a constant headache for global logistics firms, especially when they drop new compliance mandates on the industry. The real friction isn’t about understanding the rules themselves. It’s about getting regulators to understand how things actually work on the ground and what a new rule will do to the supply chain. When there’s a gap between how a company like Maersk operates and how CBP thinks it operates, you get badly designed policies that create massive business burdens and just clog everything up. The goal must be to get into the regulatory conversation early and help shape practical, effective CBP rules from the inside.

The Initial Stumble: Reactive Responses and Missed Opportunities

For a long time, most big logistics providers, even the household names, were purely reactive. A new CBP directive would come down, and it would trigger an internal fire drill to figure out the implications. Then, usually when it was far too late, they’d send some feedback during a short public comment window. I’ve seen this happen again and again. It leaves companies constantly playing defense, forced into expensive operational changes that could have been avoided if they’d just gotten involved earlier. The policy is already baked by the time they show up.

Just look at the rollout of the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system. ACE was supposed to make things more efficient, but its phased implementation and constantly changing requirements created huge integration headaches for carriers. The industry feedback was all over the place, sent in by individual companies, so it never added up to a single, powerful voice that could have influenced the system’s basic design or its timeline. Plenty of firms spent a fortune on custom IT work only to have a later ACE update make it obsolete, forcing them to spend all over again. They had the data to show this would happen, but they didn’t have a clear, compelling story to tell with it.

Building Bridges: The Proactive PR Strategy for Regulatory Dialogue

You have to change your corporate public relations function from a crisis-response team into a proactive tool for talking with regulators. This means setting up a system for early warnings, communicating constantly, and using your own data to make your case. You need to get a seat at the table way before the final rule is written so you can help shape the conversation itself.

Step 1: Establishing a Regulatory Intelligence Unit

First, you need an internal team or at least a few dedicated people whose only job is to watch for proposed rule changes from CBP, the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This isn’t just about reading the Federal Register. They need to be on all the industry alert lists, sit on trade association committees, and have contacts with government affairs people in Washington D.C. If you can spot an early white paper or an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM), you can get a 12 to 18-month head start before a formal proposal is even published. That kind of lead time is what allows you to build a real strategy.

The people on this team have to understand both the grit of logistics operations and the weird language of regulators. Their job is to see a potential rule and immediately translate it into what it will actually mean for your business, how many man-hours it will cost, what software will have to be rewritten, so you can start building your response immediately. If you don’t have this early warning, your PR team will be stuck trying to put out fires.

Step 2: Developing a Data-Driven Narrative

As soon as you spot a potential rule change, you have to build a story around your data. This is where a smart PR team proves its worth. It’s not good enough to just tell CBP a new rule will be “expensive” or “disruptive.” You have to show them the numbers. Your regulatory team needs to work directly with operations and finance. For instance, if a proposed CBP rule adds new data fields for every import, the PR team needs to work with IT and ops to quantify exactly what that means:

• The extra seconds or minutes it adds to every single declaration.
• The six-figure software development bill to integrate the new fields.
• The likely increase in data entry errors and the port delays that result.
• The total financial hit when multiplied across millions of shipments a year.

You have to package this data into something a regulator can actually understand, like an infographic, a one-page executive summary, or a case study showing what happens to a shipment under the proposed rule. You’re trying to take their abstract idea and show them the concrete, expensive, and messy reality.

Step 3: Strategic Engagement with Industry Associations

Regulators often write off a single company’s complaints as self-serving, even a huge one. That’s why you need industry associations. Groups like the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) or the World Shipping Council (WSC) represent hundreds of companies, which gives their concerns a lot more weight. Your company should be an active member, feeding your data and analysis into their collective lobbying efforts. This makes sure that when the NCBFAA sends its official comments to CBP, they’re backed by hard evidence from your operations and the operations of your peers.

Your PR team’s job is to manage this. They should be drafting position papers for the association to review or prepping your executives to present alongside other members. It’s about making sure your specific problems are part of the larger industry story.

Step 4: Direct Regulatory Outreach and Dialogue

Formal public comments are one thing, but you also need to seek out direct conversations with CBP officials, policy advisors, and even congressional staff. This is education, not just lobbying. You can organize briefings or workshops to give regulators a real look at your operations. I’ve found that a well-prepared presentation from an operational expert, showing exactly how a proposed rule will break an existing workflow, is much more effective than a 50-page written document. Showing them a simulation of how a new data rule would create a massive bottleneck at the Port of Los Angeles because it doesn’t fit into your global management system can be a very persuasive moment.

The PR team coordinates these meetings, writes the talking points, and makes sure the message is consistent. This is how you build a real relationship with regulators, one based on a shared interest in making trade secure and efficient.

Measurable Results: Shaping Policy and Reducing Burden

When you get this proactive PR strategy right, the results are concrete. A great example is how the industry pushed back during the development of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (CTPAT) program. Early drafts had some very specific security rules that, while well-intentioned, were just impossible for global carriers to implement across dozens of different countries. Through a coordinated effort that included detailed studies on operational impact and direct meetings with CBP, the industry successfully argued for more flexible, performance-based standards. This allowed companies to achieve the security goals without being locked into a one-size-fits-all mandate that would have been a logistical nightmare.

More recently, a major logistics firm saw a proposed CBP rule coming that would change advanced manifest data requirements. Their intelligence unit caught it early, giving their PR and ops teams time to build a complete impact assessment. The assessment showed that a proposed 4-hour advance manifest rule, if applied to all cargo, would wreck just-in-time inventory systems for certain manufacturers. They calculated this would lead to 8 to 12-hour delays for time-sensitive goods and add about $300 in demurrage charges per container per day. By presenting this hard data through the American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI) and in direct meetings, they got CBP to create an exemption for certain cargo, saving their clients from huge costs and disruptions.

The result wasn’t just a tweak to a policy. It was the direct avoidance of millions of dollars in compliance costs and the protection of a fluid supply chain. This proves that investing in a strong, proactive PR approach to regulation isn’t just another expense. It’s a strategic move that directly protects your bottom line and your competitive edge.

This isn’t about fighting every regulation. It’s about working with regulators to make sure the rules are smart, enforceable, and don’t accidentally break the industries they’re supposed to be watching.

Proactively engaging with regulators through strategic PR is no longer a “nice to have.” It’s a core part of running a resilient global trade operation. By putting money into early intelligence, data-driven stories, and direct dialogue, companies can help write the rules instead of just reacting to them, creating a more predictable and efficient environment for everyone.