Reference · Past-exam analysis

Most-tested provisions: which 19 CFR Parts and U.S. Code sections the exam names

Which legal provisions does the customs broker exam cite most often?

19 CFR Part 141 (Entry of Merchandise) is the single most-cited regulation on the five most recent customs broker exams, named in 16 of 398 parsed questions, followed closely by Part 12 (Special Classes of Merchandise) and Part 111 (Customs Brokers) at 12 each. These are explicit citations printed in the question or its answer choices, a floor on true topic frequency, not a ceiling.

The exam category breakdown and category frequency trends pages analyze the exam at the category level. This page goes one level deeper: which specific 19 CFR Part or U.S. Code section does each question actually name? We parsed the text of all 5 public CBLE papers CBP currently posts and counted every explicit citation string. That is a stricter, more defensible signal than a subject-area guess, because CBP wrote the citation into the question itself.

See the full 19 CFR Part map by category

Which 19 CFR Parts are named most often?

Counted across 398 machine-parsed questions from the 5 most recent papers (400 total questions on the papers; 2 with irregular PDF formatting were excluded from this count, see the methodology below). A Part named more than once inside a single question still counts once for that question.

Part	Title	Usually tested under	Citations
19 CFR 141	Entry of Merchandise	Entry / Entry Summary	16
19 CFR 12	Special Classes of Merchandise	Broker Compliance and Entry (wildlife, prison-made goods, Section 337 exclusion orders, prohibited films, radiation-emitting electronics)	12
19 CFR 111	Customs Brokers	Broker Compliance	12
19 CFR 18	Transportation in Bond and Merchandise in Transit	Entry / Entry Summary	5
19 CFR 190	Modernized Drawback	Quota (formerly Modernized Drawback)	4
19 CFR 113	Customs Bonds	Broker Compliance	4
19 CFR 165	Investigation of Claims of Evasion of Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Orders (EAPA)	Valuation, Appraisement and Duty Assessment	3
19 CFR 134	Country of Origin Marking	Valuation, Appraisement and Duty Assessment	2
19 CFR 24	Customs Financial and Accounting Procedure	Entry / Entry Summary	2
19 CFR 4	Vessels in Foreign and Domestic Trades	Entry / Entry Summary	2

Sources: the 5 exam PDFs (linked from the exam category breakdown). Titles and subject verified against the current text on eCFR Title 19 on 2026-07-29.

Which U.S. Code sections are named most often?

The exam also cites the underlying statute directly, not just the implementing regulation. 19 USC 1526 (merchandise bearing an American trademark) leads the statute count, reflecting how often intellectual-property and gray-market scenarios show up inside the Valuation category.

Section	Title	Usually tested under	Citations
19 USC 1526	Merchandise bearing American trademark	Valuation, Appraisement and Duty Assessment (IPR / gray-market goods)	5
19 USC 1514	Protests	Entry / Entry Summary (post-entry / protests)	4
19 USC 1520	Refunds and errors	Entry / Entry Summary	3
19 USC 1497	Penalties for failure to declare	Entry / Entry Summary	3
19 USC 1313	Drawback	Quota (formerly Modernized Drawback)	3
19 USC 1641	Customs brokers	Broker Compliance	2
19 USC 1401	Definitions	Multiple (general definitional citations)	2
19 USC 1337	Unfair practices in import trade (Section 337 exclusion orders)	Broker Compliance and Valuation (IPR exclusion orders)	2
19 USC 1304	Marking of imported articles	Valuation, Appraisement and Duty Assessment	2
19 USC 1484	Entry of merchandise; importer of record reasonable care	Entry / Entry Summary	2

Titles verified against the current U.S. Code text (law.cornell.edu, a public mirror of the official Code) on 2026-07-29.

How to read this table

Part 141 (Entry of Merchandise) leads, at 16 citations, consistent with Entry / Entry Summary being the largest exam category by question count on the category breakdown. If you tab one Part first, tab this one.
Part 12 (Special Classes of Merchandise) is a grab-bag worth knowing by subpart, not as one topic. Its citations span wildlife imports, prison-made goods, Section 337 exclusion orders, and prohibited films: know which subpart governs which fact pattern rather than treating "Part 12" as a single subject to review.
Part 111 (Customs Brokers) is cited exactly as often as Part 12, 12 times, anchoring Broker Compliance the same way Part 141 anchors Entry.
This is a floor, not a ceiling. A question can clearly test broker-bond mechanics without ever printing "19 CFR 113" in the text. Treat a Part's absence from this list as "not explicitly named," never as "not tested."

Methodology

Downloaded the five public exam PDFs CBP currently posts (see exam-history.json), converted each to text, and matched the regular expressions '19 (CFR|USC) (Part )?<number>' against the full question set (398 of 400 questions were machine-parsed cleanly; two questions with irregular PDF line-wrapping were excluded from the citation count but included in the total question count for context). Only citations that are explicitly printed in the exam text are counted, so a question that clearly concerns broker bonds without naming '19 CFR 113' is not counted for Part 113. This means the counts are a floor, not a ceiling, on how often a topic is truly tested; they measure named citations specifically.

Full method, the parser's known limits, and the freshness plan are recorded in src/data/provisions-citations.PROVENANCE.md in the site repository. Compiled 2026-07-29. Cross-reference the specific citations against the corpus map to see where each Part sits inside the exam's full reference structure, or drill the actual lookup skill at the navigation-speed trainer.

The customs broker license exam papers are public United States Government works (17 U.S.C. 105), published by CBP after each administration. This page analyzes the citations printed inside their questions and answer choices; it does not republish exam questions. Compiled 2026-07-29 from 5 administrations.