But seriously, it's great to have all of you here, so we can continue our discussion about how to build a smarter, more secure border.

There have been some changes since we gathered here at this time last year. There have been changes made, but some things have not and should not change: As I look about this audience and see faces I saw last year and the year before, it reminds me that our relationship with the trade has remained constant - it has not changed. There is a strong relationship between U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as the successor agency to U.S. Customs, and the trade community.

We believe in a smarter border. And whether we always agree precisely how to get there, we respect one another and we listen and we keep the dialogue open. This is important to me. This kind of relationship will lead us to success, no matter the challenge. Indeed, it has led to the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, the most successful government-private sector partnership to arise out of the ashes of 9-11.

And we have a new person responsible for helping to maintain and improve this relationship. I want to take this opportunity to introduce Keith Thomson, our new Director of the Office of Trade Relations. Keith's experience makes him well suited to be our primary liaison with the trade. He has been a CEO of three companies and has extensive knowledge of international business. So, welcome Keith.

Although our relationship with the trade hasn't changed, this morning I want tell you about some of the things that have changed over the past year and some of the changes coming in the next year and beyond.

Department of Homeland Security
Establishing the Department of Homeland Security is one very important step - perhaps the most important step here at home - that President Bush and our Nation have taken to address the threat to our country from international terrorists, a threat that is likely to be with us for years to come. With our federal government's (1) prevention, (2) preparedness, and (3) response capabilities now under one roof, in one department of government, and with that department under the outstanding leadership of Secretary Ridge, our Nation will be - and already is - safer and better able to deal with the terrorist threat.

This new department is not just about security. President Bush, Secretary Ridge, and I know that in building a more secure America, we must also ensure a prosperous America - an America that is open to the world, and is open for business and trade. The President's bold decision to establish DHS will make us much more effective in achieving both goals -- the "twin" goals.

Customs and Border Protection
The President's and Secretary Ridge's decision to create U.S. Customs and Border Protection - within the DHS - is a big piece of our Nation's strategy for doing this. Before March 1 of this year, responsibility for protecting our borders was fragmented among four separate agencies in three different departments of government. Not only was this fragmentation inefficient, it made America more vulnerable to terrorist attack.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, was created on March 1 of this year -- over 8 months ago. To create CBP we took most of U.S. Customs and merged with it the immigration inspectors and the Border Patrol from the former INS, and the agriculture border inspectors from the Department of Agriculture. This means that for the first time in our country's history, all agencies of the United States government with significant border responsibilities have been unified into one agency of our government; one agency to manage and secure our nation's borders.

One Face at the Border
We're creating, as Secretary Ridge has called it, "One Face at the Border." One agency for our borders and all our ports of entry. And we started this on day one because on March 1, 2003, I designated one port director at each port of entry and put in place a unified chain of command for all of our ports of entry and all our inspectors - whether they be legacy customs, immigration, or agriculture.

We have begun rolling out unified CBP primary inspections at international airports around the country. We now have unified primary in 18 major airports for U.S. citizens. This is a major step forward in eliminating the process of travelers potentially having to "run the gauntlet" through three separate federal inspection agencies; separate questioning and inspections for customs, immigration, and agriculture. It is a traveler's version of "one stop shopping."

Along with unified primary, we've developed specialized immigration and customs antiterrorism response teams and we're consolidating our passenger analytical targeting units. Believe it or not, U.S. Customs and the INS used to have two separate teams, or analysis units, to identify potentially high-risk passengers arriving in our airports.

We have also begun to unify cargo operations, with a similar objective - to streamline the process so that we can eliminate multiple movements and examinations of cargo. This unified cargo process incorporates all CBP agriculture and customs cargo functions. By integrating the process, we can provide a single point of contact and a single set of processes - holds and releases - for the trade community.

"One Face at the Border" means one uniform at the POEs for all inspectors, and we have begun rolling out a new CBP uniform for all CBP inspectors at our Nation's ports of entry that will replace the three different customs, agriculture, and immigration inspectional uniforms. The uniform has a patch that identifies all inspectors as U.S. Customs and Border Protection with the Department of Homeland Security seal.

CBP Officer
These things are helping us unify and become more effective as an agency. However, our most significant step toward unifying as one agency was announced by Secretary Ridge and me on September 2, 2003: the new "CBP Officer" position. We are no longer hiring and training "immigration" or "customs" inspectors. Since last month, we began training a new cadre of "CBP Officers," who will be equipped to handle all CBP primary inspection and many of the secondary inspection functions in both the passenger and cargo environments. The main exception to this is in the highly specialized agriculture area, where we will have CBP Agriculture Specialists working side-by-side with the CBP Officers.

"One Face at the Border" -- one border agency -- promises to bring many benefits. It means, first and foremost, being more effective in detecting and preventing terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering our country. To put it simply: We will have more well-trained frontline personnel working in concert in support of homeland security than ever before.

Creating one border agency will also help facilitate trade. Instead of several separate agencies screening and inspecting shipments sequentially, there will be just one agency screening and inspecting once at our borders. There will be greater staffing flexibility: that is, more inspectors that can be devoted to the twin goals of CBP: security and facilitation. This means that we will be able to make border operations more efficient and predictable. And in the fast-paced world of global commerce, this is vital to the bottom line.

"One Face at the Border" is not just some organizational goal. It means one agency to manage and secure our borders. It also means one agency to collect and analyze advance information. It means one agency to inspect when needed; one agency to expedite release and to extend our border, through C-TPAT and CSI; one agency to build the Smart Border of the 21st century.

With the creation of Customs and Border Protection, we have gone a long way toward eliminating the fragmentation at the border. Let us not fragment again.

Other Programs
As you know, we have implemented other initiatives designed to help us meet our twin goals. But, this morning, I am going to focus mainly on just one:
C-TPAT.

Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism
It was exactly two years ago here at this Trade Symposium in November 2001 that I called for a partnership between Customs and the trade against terrorism. Two years ago, we began to discuss that partnership and a set of goals that led to the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, or C-TPAT. By January 2002, we had our first 7 C-TPAT partners. At that Symposium, I challenged you and U.S. Customs to work to devise a partnership to provide for greater security of the supply chain than existed before 9-11. At last year's Symposium, I was able to tell you that in less than a year, membership in C-TPAT had grown to over 1000 private sector companies.

This year, I am pleased to be able to tell you that there are more than 4600 C-TPAT participants. The ranks of C-TPAT now include nearly all of our major importers, as well as many carriers, customs brokers and others who make up the supply chain.

These membership figures demonstrate a truly impressive level of commitment on your part. I thank you for that, and for the commitment you have made to meaningfully improve the security of your supply chain against the terrorist threat in real and tangible ways.

But it's time that we take C-TPAT to the next level, not only in terms of protecting America and the global supply chain, but also in terms of making the movement of commerce across our borders more efficient, even more efficient than it was before 9-11.

One thing we are doing to make this happen is making sure that our C-TPAT partners are honoring their commitments. As a great former president once said: "Trust, but verify."

As members of C-TPAT, all of you have submitted information telling CBP of the measures you have taken to secure your supply chains. We have discussed and, as partners, identified security best practices. We are now sending teams of C-TPAT Supply Chain Specialists all over the globe to visit with you, your vendors, and their plants to verify that these "best practices" have been taken.

We are also rolling out C-TPAT to some foreign-based manufacturers to help further secure this critical segment of the supply chain, especially where that cannot practically be done through importer leverage.

But perhaps the most important thing we can, and must, do through C-TPAT is implement the Smart, Secure C-TPAT Container. This is the essential piece of building the "green lane" of legitimate commerce into the United States.

Let me be clear on what this means, "Smart" containers need only have two minimum attributes: (1) they must be securely sealed, and (2) they must be tamper-evident.

Why do we need to do this? Because the best factory and loading dock security and the best supply chain security is of little value if the box is not secure -- if a terrorist can simply break open a container in transit and conceal a terrorist weapon including, potentially, a weapon of mass destruction.

We need a smarter, more secure container. And it is attainable now.

A C-TPAT "Smart Box" is not expensive and doesn't require high technology. It can be achieved with an ISO high-security bolt seal and better placement of the seal to prevent unauthorized entry.

Of course, a stronger seal with a better seal placement helps, but it does not make a container "smart."

Besides the sealing mechanism, the C-TPAT smart container will meet these three minimum requirements:

1. A sensor inside the container,
2. That CBP can read either at a CSI port or on arrival, and
3. That says whether it's been opened.

Will we mandate its use on every container bound for the United States? Probably not. Not in the near future. But I will tell you this - in the near future, I believe that the use of such a smart container will be seen by CBP as a supply chain security "best practice" for C-TPAT shipments.

Those companies that use the smart container will be seen by CBP as companies that go the extra mile to secure their supply chains, and go the extra mile to in fact be "low risk." It will be those companies that receive the greatest benefits from being C-TPAT members.

And it will be those companies around which we will build the true "green lane" of commerce into the United States.

We have identified a few good C-TPAT companies -- major U.S. importers with leverage over their foreign vendors -- to step up to the plate and adopt the C-TPAT smart container. I expect the smart container will be implemented next month by these C-TPAT importers. Let me be clear: not all C-TPAT members are expected to use the "Smart Box" right away, but I do expect that the Smart Box will become a C-TPAT best practice reasonably soon.

Why should this be done? Not only is this a necessary element for a truly secure supply chain, but in the not-too-distant future, I see essentially two types of shipments entering the United States, those that are low risk, and that will speed through the "green lane" into the U.S. economy, I mean immediate release, and everybody else. And what will give a shipment "green lane" treatment? On the land border, it will be participation in the FAST program. And for ocean-going shipments, it will be like FAST Mexico, securing of all the links of the supply chain. A shipment will receive "green lane" treatment if it comes from:

1. a foreign vendor that meets C-TPAT security standards at the point of loading or stuffing, or a C-TPAT importer that has assured its foreign vendors meet these standards, and
2. uses a C-TPAT smart container,
3. is shipped through a CSI port, and
4. carried on board a C-TPAT carrier's vessel,
5. entered by a C-TPAT broker, or in-house by a C-TPAT importer,
6. for delivery to a C-TPAT importer.

CONCLUSION
Let me conclude my remarks by underscoring a point I made earlier: We are reinventing our borders. We are creating a "smarter," more secure and more efficient border.

When I use the term border, I am not just talking about our actual physical borders. I'm not just talking about a line in the sand in the Sonoran Desert, or the bounds of the 49th parallel. I'm not just talking about the Ambassador Bridge or the Bridge of the Americas at El Paso, or the seaports of Los Angeles or Charleston, or the primary booths at JFK International Airport. Our border is all of these places, of course.

We ought not to place all our security at the physical borders themselves. If we did this, the borders would look like they did on September 12 and 13, 2001. The borders would cease to function when we are required to move to Level Orange or Red.

In the post-9/11 era, our border, our zone of security, must be more. It is advance information analyzed in advance for risk. It's a border that extends to the loading dock of a foreign manufacturer that exports goods to the United States. It is the foreign airport where people board airplanes to the United States or ship air cargo to the United States. It is a foreign seaport where a container is loaded for the United States. If we are to have a "smart border," our zone of security must extend to all of those places.

We can't do it without you. You and your companies own the supply chain. And you must help protect it.

Government is a blunt instrument. It can nudge. It can encourage. And most powerfully, the government can regulate, inspect, and, yes, slow down trade. But there is a better alternative - working together to protect your supply chains so CBP inspectors don't have to slow down your shipments. Secure your shipments and give us the information we need to risk manage, so we can focus our efforts on everybody else - the shipments that pose a potential risk and those we don't know enough about.

So, I challenge the trade community to:

1. help us take this model for government-private sector partnership to the next level by building and using a smarter and more secure container. A smart border includes a "Smart Box."
2. And I want you to help us make the implementation of the Trade Act rulemaking, which will be public soon, a success and a model for the world.