Five Things Just Changed for Foreign Importers of Record into the U.S. — Here's What Trade Directors Need to Read Now

"Prohibiting the filing of informal entries for foreign IORs puts all IORs on equal footing." — Executive Order, "Strengthening Customs Enforcement," June 3, 2026

On June 3, 2026, the President signed an Executive Order titled "Strengthening Customs Enforcement" that directs the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to rewrite the rules for who can act as an Importer of Record (IOR) into the United States — and to treat a foreign IOR differently from a U.S. IOR in ways that did not exist before (White House, June 3, 2026).

For any company that imports into the United States from outside it — including a Mexican manufacturer that serves as its own IOR on the U.S. side of a nearshoring flow — this is not a tariff story. It is an identity story. The Order redefines the conditions under which a non-U.S. party is allowed to be the importer at all, and it does so through a handful of discrete new requirements that each land on a specific line of your operation.

The reforms do not take effect on signing. The accompanying Fact Sheet is explicit that DHS and CBP will move through the standard rulemaking process, "meaning affected parties will have a meaningful opportunity to adjust operations, if needed" (White House Fact Sheet, June 3, 2026). The Order itself sets the clock: most IOR rule changes are directed within 180 days, disclosure and penalty changes within 90 days, and a legislative proposal within 45 days. The window to prepare is the rulemaking window. That is the work to start now.

Here are the five changes a foreign IOR — and the Trade Director who owns the entry — needs to read first.

A foreign IOR can no longer file informal entry

The Order directs the Secretary to prohibit a foreign IOR from filing informal entry — the simplified, lower-threshold entry process used heavily for low-value shipments (Executive Order §2(b), June 3, 2026). The Order's stated reasoning is that foreign IORs move substantially higher volumes of low-value articles, face lower penalty exposure where penalties scale to value, and are harder to reach when "assets, operations, and key individuals are located overseas."

The operational translation: if your U.S. import flow has relied on informal entry filed under a foreign IOR, that path is being closed. The Fact Sheet states the point plainly — only U.S. IORs will be authorized to file informal entry. The question to answer for your own operation is whether any part of your current U.S. entry volume runs informal under a non-U.S. importer, because that is the volume that will need a different structure.

Formal entry by a foreign IOR now carries a bonding and CTPAT condition

For formal entry — the standard process for commercial shipments above the informal threshold — the Order layers two new conditions specifically on foreign IORs (Executive Order §2(c), June 3, 2026).

First, a foreign IOR may not rely on a continuous bond to meet the bond requirement, except where CBP permits it because the importer has demonstrated that the revenue is fully protected and compliance is assured. The continuous bond — the single annual bond that covers all of an importer's entries — has been the default cost-efficient instrument for any business with steady volume. Removing it as the assumed path for a foreign IOR changes the bonding math, and it changes it in a way the CFO will feel.

Second, the foreign IOR must either be validated in CTPAT (the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program), if CBP deems it eligible, or use a CTPAT-validated and licensed customs broker to file its entries. That second option matters: it means the practical route to formal-entry compliance for many foreign IORs runs through a CTPAT-validated U.S. broker, not through the importer building CTPAT standing from scratch.

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Quick check: Pull your current U.S. bond structure. Is your foreign-side importer relying on a continuous bond? Is your filing broker CTPAT-validated? Those two facts determine how much of this change is already handled and how much is exposure.

Bonding and a minimum-domestic-asset floor become an eligibility test

Beyond the formal-entry conditions, the Order directs CBP to revise importer eligibility so that every IOR maintains a minimum level of tangible domestic assets, bonding, or both, and to increase the minimum required bond coverage for an IOR (Executive Order §2(a), June 3, 2026). It also directs CBP to require new data at registration — anticipated import volumes, year organized, ownership and beneficial-ownership disclosures, business-affiliation disclosures, and domestic-asset disclosures.

This is the change that quietly reshapes the most operations, because it converts financial substance into an entry prerequisite. An importer that previously qualified on paperwork alone now has to demonstrate assets, bonding, or both — and disclose who actually owns and controls it. The Order's definitions section reinforces the intent: to be "located in the United States," an entity must have its principal place of business in the U.S., a physical presence where significant business activity occurs, and sufficient tangible U.S. assets, with explicit language aimed at preventing the use of "shell companies, sham transactions, or artificial corporate or organizational structuring" to qualify as a U.S. IOR.

A "good standing" requirement now gates the right to import

The Order directs CBP to require all IORs to maintain "good standing," defined by the IOR's and its affiliates' history of compliance and payment of customs liabilities (Executive Order §2(d), June 3, 2026). An IOR not in good standing "shall not be allowed to import into the United States" — and, critically, may not designate a customs broker to act as IOR on its behalf to work around the loss.

Good standing turns your compliance history into a live operating license. It also extends to affiliates, which means a problem in a related entity can reach the importer. The Order pairs this with a directive to update the IOR registry — removing inactive IORs, confirming active ones are compliant, and creating risk-based tiers based on compliance history, enforcement actions, and audit results. The honest, well-documented importer should land in a favorable tier. The importer whose records are thin will discover where it sits at the worst possible moment.

Penalties get a floor, and mitigation gets harder

The enforcement section changes the downside. Within 90 days, the Order directs revised mitigation standards that establish a minimum penalty floor of not less than 50 percent of the assessed penalty, absent exceptional national-security circumstances, plus a minimum liquidated-damages floor and the elimination of mitigation for repeat offenders (Executive Order §4(c), June 3, 2026). The Order also directs CBP to enforce liquidated-damages claims against bonds, restrict in-bond utilization, increase audits, and impose maximum penalties on brokers who fail due diligence or repeatedly represent noncompliant clients.

For the CFO, this is the line that reprices risk. A penalty regime where CBP's discretion to reduce an assessment is capped at the halfway point — and where repeat offenders get no relief at all — means a classification or valuation error is no longer a number you can reliably negotiate down after the fact. The financial case for building the entry correctly upstream just got stronger, because the cost of getting it wrong is now floored.

What this looks like at Joffroy

Across more than 190,000 customs operations a year at 39+ ports on both sides of the border — operating both a U.S. Corporate Customs Brokerage License and three Mexican Patentes Nacionales under one integrated operation — the pattern this Order rewards is the one we build toward by default: a U.S. entry filed by a CTPAT-validated, licensed broker, against an importer whose bonding, asset substance, and compliance history are documented before the rule asks for them.

The companies that absorb a change like this without disruption are the ones whose import structure already answers the questions the new rules will ask: Who is the IOR, are they U.S. or foreign, how are they bonded, are they in good standing, and who files their entries? The companies that scramble are the ones who never had to answer those questions in one place. The rulemaking window — 90 to 180 days for most of these provisions — is precisely the time to answer them on your schedule.

For a foreign-importer structure review against your actual U.S. entry flow — bonding path, CTPAT validation, IOR eligibility, and good-standing posture — talk to a Joffroy expert before the proposed rules close the comment period.

The Order is twelve sections of enforcement language. For a foreign IOR, its operational core is one question, asked five different ways: can you still be the importer, and on what terms? The five changes above are how that question gets answered. Read them against your own structure now — the rulemaking clock is the only deadline you control.

TRADE. UNDER CONTROL.