Customs Modernization for the Platform Era
Section 8 of the Executive Order on Strengthening Customs Enforcement directs the Administration to develop legislative recommendations to further strengthen enforcement. The Order rebuilt accountability at the importer layer. These recommendations carry the same principle into the layer that now controls modern commerce: the platforms, fulfillment networks, and payment flows that the traditional importer model never anticipated.
“Accountability should follow operational control. The Order applied that principle to the importer. The next phase applies it to the platform, the warehouse, and the income earned here.”
— American E-Commerce Business Alliance
Building on the Executive Order
The June 3, 2026 Executive Order is one of the most significant customs-enforcement initiatives in decades. It strengthens Importer-of-Record accountability, raises financial and bonding requirements, requires beneficial-ownership disclosure, enhances vetting, increases penalties, and directs agencies to develop legislative recommendations. These reforms are necessary and widely supported.
But customs enforcement is evolving beyond the traditional importer model. Commerce now runs through entities that control listings, payments, fulfillment, customer access, and logistics — while remaining largely outside the framework applied to importers. The next phase of reform should reach them.
The entities that now control modern commerce
Reforms the EO fully addresses
Reforms partially addressed
Reforms still unaddressed
The Order rebuilt the importer and enforcement foundation. The unaddressed reforms cluster in one place: the platform, tax, logistics, and data layers of modern commerce — the exact recommendations below.
Five Strategic Areas
A modern enforcement framework capable of addressing commerce conducted through digital platforms rather than solely through traditional importer relationships.
Platform Accountability
Align responsibility with operational control.
Modern commerce runs through platforms — Amazon, Walmart, Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop — that control product listings, collect customer payments, direct fulfillment, onboard sellers, and control consumer access, while remaining largely outside the accountability framework the Executive Order applies to importers. Enforcement cannot operate effectively when accountability is fragmented among thousands of foreign sellers, shell companies, and rotating storefronts. Responsibility should follow operational control.
Recommendations
- Establish a framework whereby qualifying e-commerce platforms assume shared compliance responsibility when they control listings, collect payments, direct fulfillment, manage seller onboarding, or control marketplace access.
- Require qualifying platforms to maintain verifiable records and share responsibility for customs, product-safety, and trade-compliance obligations.
- Extend the Executive Order's “real, accountable party with U.S. assets” principle from the Importer of Record to the platform that operates the marketplace.
EO status: Not addressed by the Executive Order — this is the central gap.
Supply Chain Transparency
Know who is selling, who owns them, and where the goods come from.
The Executive Order improves Importer-of-Record transparency. The next step is seller- and product-level transparency at the platform layer — so that identity, ownership, and origin are verifiable rather than fragmented across anonymous storefronts.
Recommendations
- Verified seller identification: every foreign marketplace seller provides verified legal identity, beneficial ownership, tax identification, corporate registration, physical business location, and warehouse-utilization information.
- Related-account aggregation: platforms identify and aggregate related seller accounts operated by the same beneficial owner — ending account rotation, seller reconstitution, identity fragmentation, and evasion through multiple storefronts.
- Product-safety traceability: strengthen visibility into manufacturers, production facilities, testing records, certifications, and fulfillment locations — with special attention to children's products, electronics, batteries, cosmetics, and medical-related products.
EO status: Partially addressed — the EO improves importer disclosures but not platform-level seller verification.
Logistics Infrastructure Oversight
See where critical fulfillment infrastructure is, and who controls it.
One of the most significant structural changes in U.S. commerce is the expansion of foreign-linked fulfillment and logistics networks operating inside the United States. The objective is visibility and risk assessment — not restriction of lawful business activity. Government should understand where critical logistics infrastructure is located, who controls it, and how it connects to foreign commercial networks.
Recommendations
- Establish a Logistics Infrastructure Transparency Program requiring disclosure of warehouses, fulfillment centers, cross-dock facilities, last-mile delivery providers, and related-party logistics operators supporting foreign marketplace commerce.
- Incorporate periodic national-security review mechanisms for foreign-linked logistics infrastructure that may affect critical supply chains.
EO status: Not addressed by the Executive Order.
Tax and Financial Accountability
Actionable now — no legislationForeign enterprises operating in the U.S. market should compete under comparable tax-compliance standards.
This is the one strategic area whose central measure requires no new legislation. Foreign sellers conducting substantial business in the United States are already reachable under existing law — IRC §864(b), the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the Supreme Court's Wayfair decision — yet they register no U.S. company and pay no U.S. income tax. The Administration can direct Treasury and the IRS to act now, by executive authority. The legislative complement is funds-flow transparency for marketplace payments to foreign sellers.
Recommendations
- Executive action (no legislation required): direct Treasury and the IRS to treat foreign sellers above the Wayfair threshold ($100,000 in annual U.S. sales or 200 transactions) as engaged in a U.S. trade or business, and to implement source withholding on marketplace payouts using existing mechanisms.
- Legislative complement: require platforms facilitating payments to foreign sellers to report marketplace payment flows, offshore remittance structures, and related-party transactions, so that foreign enterprises compete under comparable tax-compliance standards.
EO status: Not addressed — the EO governs customs, not tax. The income-tax measure is actionable now by executive authority.
Scalable Enforcement Through Data Integration
Enforce through intelligence and analytics, not shipment-by-shipment inspection.
Current enforcement data is fragmented among multiple agencies. A modern framework should connect the data that already exists so enforcement can scale through analytics rather than inspection of individual shipments.
Recommendations
- Authorize a National E-Commerce Enforcement Data System integrating CBP, DOJ, IRS, Treasury, FTC, CPSC, and DHS — connecting import declarations, marketplace listings, seller identities, payment flows, warehouse locations, and delivery networks.
- Direct CBP to develop declared-value integrity tools and AI risk scoring that compare declared customs values against retail and marketplace pricing and historical category norms — flagging undervaluation, false invoicing, duty evasion, and misclassification for enhanced review, while allowing compliant importers to move goods efficiently.
EO status: Not addressed by the Executive Order.
A strong foundation.
Now the platform-era roadmap.
These recommendations complement — not replace — the reforms already initiated through the Executive Order. Respectfully submitted for consideration pursuant to Section 8.