CPSC eFiling Becomes Mandatory on July 8, 2026

Starting July 8, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will require electronic filing (eFiling) of Certificate of Compliance data for regulated consumer products at the time of entry. Paper certificates or "certificate on file" will no longer be enough for affected imports.

For anyone importing consumer goods from China, this is an operational change worth preparing for now — not a duty or tariff change, but one that can hold up a shipment if the data isn't ready.

What is actually changing

Today, an importer of a CPSC-regulated product must hold a valid General Certificate of Conformity (GCC) — or a Children's Product Certificate (CPC) for children's goods — and produce it on request. The rule does not create new certification requirements. What changes is how the certificate is presented: from July 8, the certificate's data must be transmitted electronically through the Partner Government Agency (PGA) message set in ACE at the moment of entry.

• General imports: mandatory from July 8, 2026.
• Goods entered from a foreign-trade zone for consumption or warehousing: a later date of January 8, 2027.

What has to be filed

The eFiling carries the content of the certificate — not a scanned document. In practice the importer (through their customs broker) transmits data elements such as:

• Product identifier (SKU / model / UPC)
• The specific safety rule the product is certified to (the CFR citation)
• Date and place of manufacture (name and address)
• Date the product was tested, and the testing laboratory
• A point of contact for the test records

Who is affected

Only products that are already subject to a CPSC safety rule, standard, or ban. Scope is driven by the rule that applies to the product — not simply by its HTS code. A product can be in scope even if its tariff number is not on CBP's published "high-risk" HTS list; that list drives automated flagging and risk scoring, not whether a certificate is required.

Common examples we see on China–US lanes: certain glass shower doors and enclosures (architectural safety glazing), painted or surface-coated consumer goods (lead-in-paint rules), and children's products.

What to do before July 8

1. Identify which of your SKUs are CPSC-regulated and require a GCC or CPC.
2. Ask each supplier to provide the certificate and the underlying data elements above — the manufacturer name and address and the testing-lab details are required fields, so collect them early.
3. Confirm with your customs broker that they are set up to transmit the CPSC PGA message set in ACE, and decide between filing the full data set per entry or pre-loading certificates in the CPSC Product Registry for repeat SKUs.

A missing or incomplete eFiling on an in-scope product can mean an examination hold or a rejected entry — even though your duty owed is unchanged. If you're unsure whether a product you ship is in scope, we're happy to talk it through and coordinate with your broker.

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Source: CPSC Final Rule, "Certificates of Compliance" (Federal Register, Jan. 8, 2025); CPSC eFiling program guidance. Effective July 8, 2026 for general imports. This summary is general information for shippers, not legal or customs advice — confirm your specific obligations with your licensed customs broker.