The US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) has created extensive documentation obligations necessary to establish qualification for preferential tariffs for trade within North America. Despite their criticality, many organisations continue to utilise manual, email-based processes to manage their USMCA Certificates of Origin (COOs). This creates many challenges, including errors, delays, vulnerability of being audited, and failures to meet compliance. The goal of this study was to evaluate an organisation’s current manual process for managing USMCA certificates within a Global Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) Company (XYZ) and to analyse twelve actual examples that represent various forms of manufacturing, including automotive, retail, aerospace, textile, and food. The descriptive research design used a combination of first-hand observation and secondary data to identify systemic inefficiencies within XYZ’s USMCA certificate management systems; to propose an around-the-clock, software-supported workflow for effective management of certificates; and ultimately to achieve significant improvement in operational performance through application solutions. The research results indicate that automated, centralised repositories for managing certificates, supplier portals for inputting information directly into the system, and contemporaneous real-time tracking of compliance all provide significant reductions in errors, improve readiness for an audit, and generate a quantifiable savings from duties. This study provides safety, significant recommendations for logistics companies that want to update their trade documentation to comply with recent requirements.
KEYWORDS: USMCA, Certificate of Origin, Trade Compliance, Supply Chain Management. Digital Documentation.
Baldwin, R. (2020). The Globo tics upheaval: Globalization, robotics and the future of work. Oxford University Press.
Chopra, S., & Meindl, P. (2019). Supply chain management: Strategy, planning, and operation (7th ed.). Pearson Education.
Christopher, M. (2016). Logistics & supply chain management (5th ed.). Pearson Education.
Christopher, M., & Peck, H. (2004). Building the resilient supply chain. The International Journal of Logistics Management, 15(2), 1-14.
Handfield, R. B., & Nichols, E. L. (2015). Introduction to supply chain management. Prentice Hall.
Kshetri, N. (2018). Blockchain's roles in meeting key supply chain management objectives. International Journal of Information Management, 39, 80-89.
Mentzer, J. T., DeWitt, W., Keebler, J. S., Min, S., Nix, N. W., Smith, C. D., & Zacharia, Z. G. (2001). Defining supply chain management. Journal of Business Logistics, 22(2), 1-25.
Monczka, R. M., Handfield, R. B., Giunipero, L. C., & Patterson, J. L. (2015). Purchasing and supply chain management (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
United States Trade Representative. (2024). USMCA automotive report to Congress. https://ustr.gov
US Customs and Border Protection. (2020). USMCA implementing instructions. https://www.cbp.gov.