Keeping the spigot of goods flowing in and out of the nation used to be the main role of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). It was that way for much of our history, up until the current administration. As recently as June, President Trump signed " Strengthening Customs Enforcement ," an executive order that is shifting the agency from cheerleading arriving cargo to cracking down on illegal importing practices.

AI is assisting with that sea change. Yet even before artificial intelligence disrupted this sector like so many others, modern digital technology, including the internet, forced a shift in the physical transportation of international goods.

Cameron W. Roberts, a Los Angeles-based trade attorney and partner at Roberts & Kehagiaras LLP , is a veteran in this space, one who has observed its machinations over the last few decades. To appreciate where we are going, we first need to reflect on where we came from. One thing Roberts well remembers is the mountainous paperwork international shipping once required.

“Every shipping container once arrived in American ports with a mind-bogglingly thick stack of documents,” he explained. Before emails and computer processors, people used analog typewriters to document cargo details. Ports would retype them, then the shipping lines, then the trucking companies, and the customs brokers. The system demanded piles of paper to ensure the never-ending influx of goods contained numbers that corresponded correctly, that actually checked out.

Viewed through a 2026 lens, this now antiquated process seems like a herculean undertaking, one that somehow worked. For years and years. Amidst all those endlessly traversing ships and bobbing cranes, commerce flourished. What didn’t pan out nearly so well was all the required documentation. Millions of people had to type and retype information, shipment by endless shipment.

“Consider what used to happen when a store orders patio furniture from a factory overseas,” says Roberts. “Getting all those chairs from a foreign port to an American loading dock might involve six different companies. Each one would send a physical bill. This required someone to open six envelopes and check six invoices against what was promised before cutting six different checks.”

Thanks to AI that’s no longer required.

From Paper Trails to Artificial Intelligence

Today, smart machines working faster than any human could possibly keep up review all the documentation and check each item against the expected cost. For instance, if $100 was the agreed upon rate for a trucking run and the invoice lists that same figure, the system automatically releases funds, greasing the skids of commerce. As a result, vendors receive payment faster without all the laborious human intervention.

Simona Filip Racek , CEO of Just Down The Street and a member of the Senior Expert Advisory Group of the Verifiable.Trade Foundation, sees that speed as only part of the picture. “It’s making trade faster for the companies already inside the system; the real question is who else gets in. Presently, trade remains fragmented across players and digital platforms. Without trust and interoperability, AI risks automating that fragmentation. The work ahead is to ensure the digitalization of trade makes global commerce cheaper, faster, and simpler for small businesses too, because if it does not, we have missed its greatest opportunity.”

When AI Becomes the Border Inspector

On the surface, this all sounds like robots de-cluttering people’s work lives, enhancing productivity in a positive-sum manner. But that’s not the full story. To appreciate why, we need to revisit America’s changing stance towards international shipping. The federal government is keen to use AI too, but for something different: a crackdown on illicit importation.

Just last month, CBP put importers on notice. According to the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas , the CBP is “reminding the trade community that, in response to the ‘Strengthening Customs Enforcement’ executive order, Importer of Record (IOR) numbers in the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) that have not been used to file an entry for one year or more and have no outstanding post-entry transactions may be deactivated.”

The New Crackdown on Forced Labor

At present, forced labor ranks among CBP’s chief concerns and resides squarely in AI’s crosshairs. Consider cotton production. It involves many moving parts, from picking it to spinning it into thread to weaving into fabric to be sewn into pants and socks, all the while traveling through a tangle of vendors in disparate nations. How could anyone possibly know if forced labor from Uyghurs was involved?

A human might not be able to put all those puzzle pieces together. Increasingly, AI can. Recently, CBP awarded supply chain AI firm Exiger a multimillion-dollar contract to detect illicit transshipment at scale. “Billions of dollars worth of global trade move through illegal transshipment channels that seek to bypass U.S. restrictions … Exiger is proud to support this mission, bringing to bear the world’s largest proprietary supply chain database and the market’s most sophisticated AI,” per the company site .

Roberts is careful to note artificially intelligent algorithms like the type deployed by Exiger are not infallible. Instead, they often deliver scores reflecting whether or not a shipment is "more likely or not likely to be tainted.” That’s enough for U.S. Customs to drop the hammer. A suspicious score can result in inquiries, detained cargo, fines, or more punitive measures.

Zooming out, forced labor might appear to be a surprising trade policy concern. On further inspection, a rational explanation comes into focus. “It is the one trade issue everyone in Washington agrees on,” says Roberts. “Labor unions hate competing with unpaid workers. So do American manufacturers, and human rights advocates need no convincing at all.”

With all these stakeholders aligned against the practice for their own unique reasons, it makes sense that the federal government would wield AI as a counterforce to stop it.

An AI Arms Race at the Border

But there’s one more element to this story, and it, too, involves AI. All those underhanded importers also view AI as their own helpful tool. Even as AI speeds up cargo processing and stymies malfeasance, it’s helping criminals game the system. Rerouting is one way criminals leverage such technology. Similarly, fraudsters use AI to forge bills of lading and simulate shipping patterns to obscure a product’s true origin.

As AI increases its capacity, we can expect the current cat-and-mouse game to grow ever more complex. “AI could soon fabricate the evidence itself,” Roberts suggests. “Picture a fake network of suppliers, complete with a convincing paper trail, designed to fool the government's tracing software into believing goods came from somewhere they never touched.”

Going forward, it’s reasonable to expect artificial intelligence will not only continue to expedite international commerce, but it will also serve in a protective capacity. What used to take humans so much time to produce, check, or defend will happen in seconds, reshaping the economy and, really, life as we know it, one AI-processed shipment at a time.