We Secured the Border—but ‘We’re Not Done Yet’

ew government agencies have been involved as deeply with the priorities of the Trump administration as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which handles not only border security but also tariffs and trade regulations. CBP’s Commissioner Rodney Scott sat down with The American Conservative to discuss how the agency is approaching these priorities and what Americans should know about our country’s borders.

One of the things that we’ve seen from the Trump administration has been a pretty dramatic increase in the amount of tariffs that are charged. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has quite a bit to do with the administration and implementation of those tariffs. How has this impacted the operations here at CBP?

I think the most important piece that people need to understand is that the economic security of the United States is just as critical to national security as more traditional things they would think about, like border security or the military. Simply knowing who and what comes into this country is what U.S. Customs and Border Protection does. We’re already in the customs business of collecting the tariffs and imposing the tariffs. 

We have two offices within CBP dedicated to this. The Office of Trade focuses on the regulation aspect. The Office of Trade Relations works with the brokers, the industry, if you will, to make sure the communication flows and the processes work smoothly. Both of those offices overlap with the Office of Field Operations, which is where the visible work takes place—the guys with the blue uniforms that are inspecting the cargo coming in and making sure it is what people say it is.