International traders have long complained that the rules for receiving duty-free treatment under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are too complicated and difficult to follow. Even the most experienced trade experts have disagreed on how to comply with NAFTA's 118 pages of rules of origin, which determine where a product is made for purposes of duty calculation.

But the federal government has been listening to the trade community and has begun to make some changes—if not in NAFTA, then at least in several recently signed trade pacts. Agreements with Chile, Singapore, and Central America, among others, incorporate simpler procedures for proving origin and claiming preferential treatment, according to Myles Harmon, director of the Commercial Rulings Division for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"In the 10 years since NAFTA, we've learned what works and what doesn't," Harmon said at the American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI) annual conference in New York.

What works, he continued, are flexible rules of origin; product-specific rules of origin only when needed; simplified tests for determining the value of originating content (i.e., material that originates in the free trade partner country); and simpler claim and verification procedures.

Under NAFTA, for example, preferential treatment is predicated almost entirely on a certificate of origin that's based on information provided by the exporter. The Chile and Singapore pacts, on the other hand, allow the importer to claim duty exemption on customs clearance documents.

Also new: Claimants needn't account for every cost component for both originating and non-originating materials. Instead, they can choose to provide data for one or the other.

Some NAFTA-like requirements remain in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to meet the needs of the automotive industry. For the most part, though, importers will find it less costly and less time-consuming to qualify for preferential treatment under newly signed agreements and those now being negotiated.

Harmon doesn't expect the federal government to make similar changes in NAFTA's arduous rules. Instead, as one attendee pointed out, federal authorities are more likely to wait for the hemispheric Free Trade Agreement of the Americas—which will include the simpler rules—to be adopted and supercede NAFTA.