The nice thing about being a massive market like the US is that you can impose regulations that producers in other countries need to follow to be able to participate in the market. It does make enforcement harder, but as long as you have the political will its definitely feasible. O/c having the political will is an entirely different thing.
Example: The US has banned lots of Chinese stuff. The stuff now sneaks across the border into southeast Asia, or goes to a final assembly plant there and becomes Vietnamese or Cambodian. There are _supposed to_ be supply chain records and audits in many cases, though reality often doesn't match paperwork...
Probably should work on catching a few murderers and figuring out an even moderately effective enforcement mechanism before pretending you can make more stuff illegal. Otherwise people just laugh at you as you further undermine any perceived authority you once had.
We have done close to nothing to enforce the current tariffs and such, allowing blatant country of origin laundering to go the whole time with next to zero enforcement action. You can bring a ready to prosecute case to regulators and they do utterly nothing.
Adding more to this regime would just be yet more performative nonsense to make some people feel good about themselves. We need far less of that in this world.
Now if you're just arguing the penalties need to be stiffer: sure!
But on a cursory search, I don't believe it's fair at all to say we've done "close to nothing" or there's "next to zero enforcement action" or regulators "do utterly nothing" or it's "performative nonsense".
What evidence do you have to back up your claims? It seems like perhaps you've actually brought a ready-to-prosecute case forward? Curious to learn!
I quickly scanned all those examples, and it doesn't appear a single one had to do with laundering country of origin? That's specifically what I mean - not just fining US companies for trying to under report custom values, which seems to be the bulk of those cases and is nothing new.
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197961495 I think is the best quick example of the problem I am talking about here. Outright actual fraud by foreign companies laundering country of origin through intermediary countries. There is next to zero enforcement on this considering how rampant it is. There seems to be very little interest in doing any sort of "hard" prosecution on this problem - likely because it is complex and difficult to investigate appropriately.
I consider it rampant and enforcement a joke since I have spoken to vendors about past and future potentially tariffs and they are completely unconcerned by them. Minor cost of doing business increase to have products shipped through an intermediary company and relabeled. Maybe some quick final assembly if they really are trying to play the game.
I think current enforcement works okayish for folks trying to push the limits. It seems to fall over on outright fraud imposed by bad actors.
This is a great and thoughtful response! Thank you for writing it up. I imagine it is fairly hard to catch (and/or prove) the origin laundering you’re talking about
Another way to look at is the USA is overdeveloped that we have a duty to make everything as advanced as possible. Which raises the sophistication of other nations.
