Customs Law

This will be the last post of 2018. It was not a good year for the Customs Law Blog. It was a good and difficult year for customs lawyers and equally so for importers. 2018 gave us 232 duties on steel and aluminum products and a poorly implemented exclusion process. We also saw 301 duties imposed on billions of dollars of goods imported from China, plus a slightly better exclusion process. To make the year just that much more unpredictable, importers and exporters faced numerous threats by the US to withdraw from NAFTA and the release of the text of a substantially new North American free trade deal. All of that, and other factors, kept me from being able to update the blog as often or as substantively as I would have hoped. I hope you are all reading my Twitter feed to keep up with me and my short updates. I am forever grateful to the readers of this blog. I appreciate your feedback and hope to continue to have opportunities to meet in real life at trade events throughout the year...

At the moment, my family and I are hiding from the Chicago winter in Panama. There is no sign of winter here. There is, however, a big canal. From my current poolside seat, I can see freighters, container ships, and tankers, lined up waiting to enter the canal on the pacific side. I am told they wait can be about 24 hours or more and that the 80 km transit can take 8 hours or more. It is very cool to see this in real life. Although I have spent my entire career dealing with supply chains, I rarely need to actually see the supply chain in action. Here, it is unavoidable. So, off to the Miraflores locks for a closer look. (c) 2017 LMFriedman (c) 2017 LMFriedman Happy new year to all of you.

This is going to be one of my old-school posts mostly about something other than customs law. It is about my history with mobile devices and my current heartache. Deal with it. At the end, I get to a more relevant review of the CustomsMobile app. Around 2001, I used something called a Handspring Visor with a VisorPhone attachment. It was basically a Palm Pilot with a slot for extension modules, and its was both functional and cool. When that stopped being cool, around 2004 I switched over to a Palm Treo 650. That was a great device. It was compact, had a web browser and, if I remember right, would sync with my work email and contacts. That was great until a guy I know doused it in coffee. I wrote about that in 2005. In 2006, I replaced that with a new Treo 700p, which I also wrote about . That post garnered one of my favorite comments ever, from then-New York Times tech columnist David Pogue . After that, I had brief dalliance with Android in the form of a Motorola Droi...

This is one of those posts in which I tell you that there are many cases and rulings sitting on my desk, all of which I plan to use as the basis for upcoming blog posts. It is also the end of the year and the time when I contemplate the state of this blog. [Note: Shaking my fist at the ABA Journal ] This has been a good blog year, despite having fallen behind on my coverage of rulings. My personal view is that the content remains of acceptably high quality combined with it usually being timely. So that's good. I did earn recognition from the Expert Institute ; fifth place out of a large field is not too bad. Thanks for your votes. I'll continue to plug along here and hope you stay with me in an 2017. As always, I sincerely appreciate my readers. At the recent Court of International Trade Judicial Conference and at a trade meeting in Chicago, folks introduced themselves as readers. That always makes me happy. I hope to see more of you at upcoming events. Feel free to comment o...

Election day is here. If you have not already voted, get out tomorrow and vote. After you have voted, come back and vote for this blog in the Expert Institute Legal Blog Contest. There are only about six days left to vote and my early surge is fading. Please show your support. You can vote at this link.

Here's my new profile .

You may recall that last year my final exam for Trade Remedies was an elaborate, cinematic fact pattern involving the DC superhero universe. See here for that . Read the comments, which are really quite good. This year, I was not able to string together quite as detailed a fact pattern for my Customs Law class. I did, however, ask this question. Tell me what you think is the correct answer. I will be flexible, but you should not need to stretch too much. I'll be back soon. I promise. QUESTION 3: 25 POINTS Ralph Dibny is the CEO of Plastico, which imports plastic in various forms from suppliers all over the world into the United States. To find suppliers, Ralph relies on two representatives. Reed Richards is responsible for suppliers in South America. Patrick “Eel” O’Brian is responsible for suppliers in Asia. Neither representative is an employee of Plastico. When Plastico wants to purchase materials from South America, Dibny contacts Richards who then finds supplier...

I realize it has been a month since my last Ruling of the Week. I am reasonably certain I will come up for air soon and post some new material. In the meantime, if you are in NYC for the CITBA CLE and Annual Meeting on Thursday , I hope to see you there.

Congratulations to ICPA on another successful (and sold out) conference. I heard lots of good talks and had fun fake-litigating the classification of chopped olives . Sadly, I lost. I also got to do a last-minute recycling of my talk on tariff engineering , which was both fun and efficient (since the work was already done). Thanks to all the blog readers who introduced themselves. See you next year.

I have been sitting on Xerox Corp. v. United States while I try to take care of meaningful client work. Thank you clients for another year of interesting and rewarding work. I am always honored to be given the opportunity to work with some great companies and individuals. [There may be spoilers in the links below. There are none in the text. Go down those rabbit holes at your peril.] I am irrationally happy to say that saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens this weekend. It made me very happy to re-live being 14 years old, at least for a while. I am also very pleased to say that the reboot did not screw anything up. It has almost exactly the look and feel of the original trilogy, is a bit funnier, and moves at a great pace. Now, if they don't turn Star Trek into the Fast and the Furious, I will continue to be nerdishly happy. I am, however, starting to lose enthusiasm for Batman vs. Superman , which they better not screw up. [Shaking fist at heaven.] That said, I am now abo...

I got a nice shout out from Law and the Multiverse today. The post is about a law review article on using zombies as teaching tools in law school. Read the post and then read the full article.

I've been busy. That's a good thing. The U.S. Court of International Trade has been busy as well. That is also a good thing. I am taking this week off. That is a good thing. The Venn diagram of this situation looks like this:

You may recall, I previously posted about my concerns for the proper means of entering the shambling undead . It appears U.S. Customs and Border Protection has already contemplated the tariff treatment of drinkable zombies mixes. In NY N008597 (Apr. 13, 2007), the product was, among other things, a coffin-shaped cardboard box containing a bottle of "Citrus Zombie." The drink was about 70% water and 30% sugar with small amounts of flavoring a citric acid. The bottle included instructions to mix with equal parts of tequila, which is odd since a zombie cocktail is traditionally made with rum. According to CBP, this product is a food preparation not elsewhere specified or included, classifiable in 2106.90.9972. Helpfully, CBP pointed out that the item was not properly marked with its country of origin and that the food preparation is subject to FDA regulation. All of which is a segue into this cartoon from yesterday's paper . For copyright reasons, I'm just giving ...

Domain issue fixed. Return to your normal activities. My fear of having my domain hijacked by a competitor has passed.

I teach trade remedies law at the Center for International Law at the John Marshall Law School . It turns out that drafting an exam is a fairly difficult task that takes some level of inspiration. This year, I decided to let my geek flag fly and craft an exam based on an original comic book scenario. After grading the tests, I sent it to the completely awesome Law and the Multiverse , which was kind enough to run it as a guest post. Yesterday, it was picked up the by also awesome Above the Law . For me, that's a good day. Read the exam and the resulting discussion at Law and the Multiverse. Can you tease out all the references to the DC universe? Jean Loring, Esq. and Ray Palmer, Hero.

You may not know that I am endlessly fascinated with cryptozoology, the hunt for creatures heretofore unrecorded by professional scientists yet ardently chased by mostly amateur adventurers. Of the big three such creatures, the Loch Ness Monster seems to be fading from the zeitgeist. That leaves the Himalayan Yeti (and all of its Asian cousins) and the North American  Bigfoot. Recent DNA research by an apparently reputable professional scientist indicates that at least some alleged Yeti material may actually come from a sort of absurdly rare  hybrid polar bear previously thought to be extinct. That's a fascinating possible discovery by a real scientist and stands in stark contrast to the decided lack of success by so-called professional Bigfoot hunters. Bigfoot, AKA Sasquatch, is absurdly camera friendly, at least in the form of fleeting thermal spikes, pixilated blobs, tree knocks, and hoots recorded by numerous "documentary" television programs. My newest favorite su...

2013 is done. To all of you who read this blog, thank you. I am gratified to know that some of you in the trade community find enough useful and interesting information here to voluntarily give up your time to read my words. That means I am doing my job. As always, I welcome comments and criticism. Also, when I am out and about, I am always happy to meet people who let me know that they read the blog. If you see me at an event, please introduce yourself. That's true no matter what role you play in the trade community. Should you or your company have customs, trade, or export needs, please feel free to reach out to me and my partners at Barnes, Richardson & Colburn . We are happy to help. All my best to all of you. I wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.

I am not sure how often readers of this blog might use the suggested links on the right margin. I have noticed that a few of the blogs listed there have gone dormant and other URLs have been co-opted by other sites. So, I have done a little curating and removed dead or bad links. I also added a link to the Cultural Heritage Lawyer blog , which I recommend you visit. Cultural heritage law is focused on the restrictions on the trade in antiquities and important artifacts of cultures and ethnic groups. Often, the primary enforcement agencies are Department of Homeland Security Investigations (of ICE for us old timers) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As a result, these issues often become issues of customs law, and something I try to follow. You should too, it is interesting stuff. Also, while I do not tweet often, I remind readers to subscribe to my Twitter feed to catch short updates and links to interesting articles.

This blog is now eight years old. That is surprising even to me. As always, I feel guilty that things do not get here as quickly as they should. That is life with a job and a family. I'll do my best to keep up. I just printed three CIT cases to review. My thanks for your continued readership. Watch this space for developments. Larry

The False Claims Act is a powerful tool. It allows individuals who have information concerning false statements made to the U.S. government to file a law suit on behalf of the United States when the false statements were made to secure some benefit from the government. The Justice Department then decides whether to take up the suit or to leave it to the private party to pursue. This applies in all sorts of interactions with the government. For example, there are often False Claims Act cases brought against doctors who over bill the federal government for Medicare patients. Whistle blowers also file these cases against government contractors. The False Claims Act can also be invoked where someone makes a false statement to the government to avoid some expense. The party bringing the suit (technically the  "relator" rather than the plaintiff) is initially anonymous and is entitled to a portion of the recovery, which can be substantial. One place I have never seen a False...