Trade, Customs & Border Transformation
The Trade & Border Signal · Issue 13
The Coastline Hasn’t Moved. The Customs Enforcement Line Has.
What CBP’s expanded enforcement reach around Puerto Rico means for Caribbean institutions—and why legal authority itself is becoming an operational risk.
Read the full issue on Substack ↗The signal
The territory has not changed. The geographic space in which specified customs-enforcement powers may be exercised has.
On 25 August 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection established new Customs-Enforcement Areas extending specified customs-enforcement authorities from 12 to 24 nautical miles in designated waters, including around Puerto Rico.
For Caribbean institutions, the operational question is whether expanded enforcement pressure changes routes, transfer points or risk elsewhere in the region. That is a development to monitor, not an outcome to assume.
The issue sits within a wider regional picture: freight and customs-clearance costs reaching retail prices in Barbados; logistics disruption affecting poultry availability in Trinidad and Tobago; and fast-moving U.S.–Canada tariff measures turning classification, origin and legal authority into strategic risk-management concerns.
The border is shaped not only by infrastructure and technology, but by the legal authority to act—and by the capacity of institutions to anticipate what follows.
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Legal authority itself is becoming an operational risk.
Read the complete analysis in Issue 13 of The Trade & Border Signal on Substack.
Read the full issue on Substack ↗For further information, speaking engagements, research collaboration or advisory enquiries relating to this topic, contact velma@walkermeridian.com.