Opinion OP.3: A Two‑Year Phase‑In for Forwarder Obligations

To the members of the Trade Council

Opinion RC/TR/2026/OP.3
24 October 2026

Who I am and what happened

I submit this dissenting opinion as Rapporteur of the Trade Council. I am writing from Da Nang, Vietnam, and I am one of the small-business owners whose experience informs this Council’s work. I do not identify my business here. The point of this opinion is not to ask members to accept my account as representative. It is to ask that we distinguish carefully between what the evidence establishes and what a proposed rule would require of people who are not in this Assembly.

On 20 October, TR-001 passed the Council’s five-part pattern test. The test examined Volume, Frequency, Consistency, Spread and Corroboration. The result supports moving from reports to a proposed fix. It does not, by itself, settle the details of that fix. The question before us is whether small traders should receive size-based thresholds, plain-language guidance and phase-in when new trade rules or tariffs apply, alongside landed-cost transparency from freight forwarders. I agree with the first three protections. I dissent from imposing the forwarder obligation without a two-year phase-in.

This is not a vote against transparency. A small importer should be able to understand, before committing to a transaction, what charges are known, what charges remain uncertain, and what assumptions have been used to estimate the landed cost. Nor is it a claim that forwarders should be free to withhold information indefinitely. My disagreement is about timing and

implementation: a standard can be fair in its destination and unfair in the speed with which it makes a new duty binding.

What the evidence shows

The Trade Council’s evidence, as recorded on 24 October, is substantial and geographically broad. It has 213 members from 45 countries and 532 reports from 50 countries. The median amount at stake is approximately US$4,112. In the last 30 days, 111 reports were filed. These figures describe a recurring problem, not an isolated inconvenience, and they show why the Assembly should act.

The reported situations divide into 167 concerning supplier terms and 365 concerning tariffs. The distinction matters. Tariff changes and trade-rule changes can create costs that are outside a trader’s control; supplier terms and the information passed through an intermediary can affect whether a small business can anticipate those costs. A single remedy should not blur these different sources of risk. The tariff reports support measures that help small traders understand and prepare for obligations. They do not, on their own, establish that every forwarder can meet a newly specified disclosure duty immediately.

The reports come from the United States (90), Canada (79), Mexico (27), the United Kingdom (20), India (19), France (15), South Africa (13) and Australia (13), among other countries. Members report from 45 countries, while reports come from 50. That difference is a strength of the record: reports are not limited to the places where members are seated. It also warns against drafting as though one country’s administrative arrangements are universal.

The team-size figures show whom the proposal must work for: 47% of reporting businesses have 2–9 team members; 34% are operated by one person; 13% have 10–49 team members; and 6% have 50–249. The median amount at stake is serious for a small trader, but the same amount cannot be treated as equally easy for every participant in a supply chain to absorb or manage. A rule that is understandable to a large organization with

dedicated compliance staff may be difficult to apply consistently across small operators and intermediaries.

At Assembly level, the 24 October snapshot records 1,773 seated members in 49 countries and 5,417 reports from 50 countries. The reports are distributed as follows: Platform 1,962; Cashflow 1,357; Fair Play 709; Trade 532; Resilience 375; Red Tape 304; and Team 178. These totals establish the scale of the Assembly’s evidence base. They do not make every proposed operational detail self-evident. The pattern test is a threshold for responsible drafting, not a substitute for consultation on who must do what, by when, and with what transition.

The Trade Council’s own record includes the Landed Cost Diary and supplier-terms survey, an interim pattern review, and the certification of the pattern test. Its 22 October letter to members announced the result and drafting plan. These records give us grounds to proceed. They also give us a responsibility to be precise: transparency is the objective; a workable transition is part of the remedy, not an excuse to abandon it.

How the law in my country and elsewhere handles it

I write from Vietnam, but the material before this opinion does not contain a verified account of Vietnamese law governing forwarder disclosure or a statutory transition period for such duties. I will not fill that gap by guessing. The absence of a country-law citation here is deliberate: a Council opinion should not present an unsupported description of national law as fact.

The dossier does offer two relevant cases elsewhere. First, the European Union’s CBAM simplification uses an annual mass threshold of 50 tonnes from 1 January 2026. The stated effect is to remove approximately 90% of importers, mostly SMEs, from the mechanism while keeping approximately 99% of emissions in scope.¹ This is a useful case of calibrating a regulatory system by scale while retaining broad coverage of the underlying policy objective. It supports the principle that small traders should not always face the same administrative burden as larger participants. It does not establish

that a forwarder-disclosure rule should have no transition, or that two years is the correct transition in every jurisdiction.

Second, the UK Late Payments Bill exempts import and export contracts. The Trade Council has addressed that feature in its letter to the UK Department for Business and Trade.² That case shows that lawmakers may distinguish cross-border transactions when defining a rule’s scope. It also cautions against assuming that a domestic policy framework automatically fits international trade relationships. It does not answer the separate question of how quickly a new information duty should take effect.

Neither case is a direct legal precedent for the clause I oppose. The CBAM threshold concerns the scope of a mechanism, and the UK bill’s exemption concerns the contracts covered. I rely on them for the narrower proposition that careful calibration is already present in the policy landscape described in our dossier. The Council should make the case for a phase-in on its own merits, rather than overstate what these cases prove.

The strongest argument against my view and my answer

The strongest argument against a two-year phase-in is that small importers are already paying the cost of uncertainty. Every additional period without a clear landed-cost account leaves them exposed to charges they may not have anticipated. The pattern test has been passed; reports span countries and include 365 tariff-related situations. A long transition could preserve the very opacity the standard is meant to correct, while imposing little burden on forwarders that already provide clear information.

I take that argument seriously. Delay is not neutral for the small trader who must decide whether to accept an order, set a price, or commit working capital without knowing the likely cost of bringing goods in. A phase-in must not become a quiet exemption, and it must not postpone every useful improvement until the final day.

But the evidence presented to us establishes the problem experienced by traders; it does not measure the readiness of forwarders across jurisdictions, identify a common technical baseline, or show that all relevant charges can be reliably itemized in the same way at the same point in a transaction. I do not claim that such preparation is impossible. I say that the dossier does not establish that it can be completed everywhere immediately. If we impose a duty without time to clarify its scope and practical requirements, we risk a standard that is formally strong but inconsistently followed, or one that gives traders false confidence in estimates that remain incomplete.

Two years is my proposed safeguard, not a number derived mathematically from the report totals. I offer it as a defined, finite implementation period in which the Council can consult, publish plain-language requirements, and allow affected participants to prepare. The period should have milestones. Early voluntary disclosure and clear notices about unknown or variable costs should begin during the transition; the final obligation should not be open-ended. The Council should also review whether the planned steps are being met and whether the standard needs clarification before full application.

The answer to the harm of delay is therefore not to pretend that readiness has been demonstrated. It is to make the transition useful and accountable. A two-year phase-in should preserve immediate access to information about known costs, require uncertainty to be stated plainly, and lead to a defined final duty. That approach respects the 111 reports filed in the last 30 days without converting urgency into an assumption that every operational question has already been answered.

My position clause by clause

Size-based thresholds. I support size-based thresholds for small traders where a new trade rule or tariff creates administrative duties. The CBAM case in the dossier shows that a threshold can reduce the number of smaller operators directly covered while retaining most of the policy

objective. The standard should require the Council to explain how any threshold is measured, who qualifies, and what happens when a business changes size. It should not use a threshold to conceal costs or deny traders basic information.

Plain-language guidance. I support this without reservation. Guidance should explain the obligation in practical terms, identify what information a small trader should seek, and distinguish a known charge from an estimate or an unresolved amount. It should be available before a rule takes effect and be written for owners who do not have specialist compliance staff. Guidance is not a substitute for a clear standard, but it is necessary if the standard is to be usable.

Phase-in for small traders when new trade rules or tariffs apply. I support a phase-in. It should be announced in advance, tied to the date a new rule or tariff begins to apply, and accompanied by timely guidance. The Council should avoid language that treats a transition as discretionary goodwill. It is a protection against imposing a new administrative burden before affected small traders have a fair opportunity to understand it.

Landed-cost transparency from forwarders. I support the objective and oppose immediate full application of a new binding obligation. The standard should include a two-year phase-in before obligations on forwarders take effect. During that period, it should establish what counts as a landed-cost disclosure, how estimates and unknown charges are identified, and what information must be supplied at the relevant stage of a transaction. Interim practice should encourage clear explanations of known costs and explicit notice when a figure is provisional. At the end of the period, the requirement should become binding as defined in the adopted standard.

Review and accountability. A transition needs a record. The Council should provide for a review before the two-year period ends, using evidence from small traders and forwarders, and should publish any proposed clarification for comment. That review must not be an automatic extension. If the Council believes an extension is necessary, it should

explain the reason and seek the appropriate decision under Assembly procedure. Members should be able to distinguish a temporary implementation step from a permanent dilution of the standard.

What I ask

I ask members of the Trade Council to retain the size-based threshold, plain-language guidance and phase-in protections for small traders, while amending the forwarder-transparency clause to provide a two-year phase-in before binding obligations take effect. I ask that this period include practical milestones, immediate clarity about known and uncertain costs, and a review before full application. I also ask members not to present the CBAM threshold or the UK import/export exemption as proof of a specific forwarder transition period; they support careful calibration, but the two-year proposal is a judgment this Council must defend directly.

Notes and sources

1. European Parliament, “CBAM: Parliament adopts simplifications to the EU carbon leakage instrument.” ↩

2. RC/TR/2026/22, Letter to the UK Department for Business and Trade on the import/export exemption in the Late Payments Bill, 24 June 2026. ↩

Sources

1. European Parliament: CBAM simplifications