Administrative Law

Snubbed

Posted on December 10, 2007
Clearly I have no friends in the highest reaches of the American Bar Association, an organization to which I have given years of effort and cold cash in the form of dues, travel expenses, and time away from work. And yet, hard as it may be for you--my dedicated readers--to accept, once again I have been snubbed...

Update and Legislation

Posted on December 05, 2007
This piece updates the status of Goran Pavic, the trucker Customs and Border Protection arrested on an Interpol warrant for war crimes in Croatia. He remains in custody in Detroit although the magistrate on the case seems to be questioning the arrest...

Peru is a Done Deal

Posted on December 04, 2007
Today the Senate approved the Peru Trade Promotion Agreement by a vote of 77 to 18. This clears the way for the president to sign it into law. Here is a NY Times article on the passage. As these things go, this is not a very big deal in terms of economic impact for the U...

News Review: Excellent Article on Myth of the NAU

Posted on November 28, 2007
My groundbreaking work debunking the myth of the North American Union has, once again, been snubbed. Nevertheless, this article by Drake Bennett of the Boston Globe is excellent. The author not only discusses the facts but also the political and social reasons that the myth persists and is gaining traction...

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Counterfeit News of Interest

Posted on November 27, 2007
Customs and Border Protection is responsible for preventing the importation of counterfeit merchandise. This news item from CBP says it recently intercepted a shipment of 20,000 fake "Coach" belts from China in Seattle. Clearly, the holidays will be less bright for the fashion conscious bargain hunter this year...

Two-fer Tuesday

Posted on November 27, 2007
This goes in the customs news of the weird category:Customs and Border Protection stopped a driver on the southern border attempting to illegally enter a U-Haul full of cheese and two parrots. Upon being pulled over for secondary inspection, the driver readily confessed to smuggling the merchandise...

Cool Hand Customs

Posted on November 17, 2007
Sometimes the law turns on the strangest of details. Samuel Aaron, Inc. v. United States, a Federal Circuit decision affirming the Court of International Trade is a good example.The issue here was whether protests were timely filed. The case is more complicated than most because the relevant liquidation was a reliquidation and the only notice of reliquidation was an off-line binder in the customhouse that was separate from the normal binder of printouts generated by ACS...

Is Customs Working Too Hard?

Posted on November 14, 2007
Look at this story.The thing about having a job to do as a professional is the ability to exercise discretion. Digging ditches is an honorable profession. But ditch diggers rarely get to decide how deep or wide to dig. They follow directions and do what is required for the particular job...

Customs & Border Protection at Work

Posted on November 12, 2007
More on the international trade importance of socks. It seems CBP intercepted Chinese socks transshipped through Ghana. The socks not only avoided quantitative restrictions but also claimed benefits under AGOA.Breaking up a scheme right out of a 1960's sitcom, CBP found a man in a suitcase in the back of a car crossing in from Mexico...

NAFTA Expansion?

Posted on November 09, 2007
The House voted on the Peru Free Trade Agreement yesterday. There is a lot of campaign season politics involved in this vote. The Senate still needs to pass the bill before the agreement can be implemented. That's fine. There are so many FTA's now that the passage of a new one is of little note as far as the trade community is concerned...

On Bismarck and Brokers

Posted on November 08, 2007
Otto von Bismarck is reported to have said "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." Clear evidence of that is Senate Bill 2045. This bill, introduced in September by Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas is intended to sure up consumer product safety by reforming the Consumer Product Safety Commission...

Customs News of the Weird

Posted on November 05, 2007
Shopping cart crime.Apparently, the aftermarket for Home Depot shopping carts in the Caribbean is robust enough to spawn their theft and smuggling out of the U.S.Edwards confused on the borders of North America.According to John Edwards, NAFTA has caused the recent flood of unsafe toys from China...

Heartland Cleanup

Posted on November 05, 2007
Heartland By-Products is one of those cases that seems to never quite end. The basic facts are that Heartland wanted to import sugar syrup from Canada to the U.S. and sought to arrange its manufacturing in a way that avoided the potential high rate of duty for out of quota shipments...

From the News

Posted on October 23, 2007
It is funny how market segments you might not think of as "industries" in and of themselves can sometimes turn into important players in the trade debate. Take, socks, for example. This article discusses the plight of a Canadian company that invested in a sock factory in Honduras in part to take advantage of access to the U...

C-TPAT Validations in China

Posted on October 18, 2007
Here's news: Customs and Border Protection has finally secured the ability to have its people do C-TPAT validation in China. Until now, CBP has planned to rely on private third parties to conduct the validations. Now, CBP personnel will do it. I'm not sure that there is much practical significance to this but it does alleviate the concern about business proprietary information being in private hands...

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