What is to stop, people/businesses/entities etc, buying the stuff, e.g. originally from China, or a car they want, with huge tariffs, if bought in the usual way, via Russia, or other countries. Then by the time it reaches the US, possibly by the container load, getting 0% tariffs?
I.e. It gets **whitewashed** (or so the modern expression goes, as I understand it).
In other words, like the 1920s/early30s prohibition, where lots of people, just defeat the new law(s), in various ways, making it somewhat unenforceable.
Edit:
It would be dishonest/criminal, so I'm NOT recommending it. But being realistic, if there is money/profit to be made. There can be people, who are willing to do it.
This is a common problem with country of origin rules... I can't remember the company name now, but you used to be able to buy ~£500 hot air rework stations from a French company, that were "Made in France", on Farnell. It was very obvious that these were just rebadged Atten hot air units that could be had for under £100 normally. These were made in China. In order for something to be designated as being "made" in that country it has to undergo a substantial transformation there. Simply adding a logo is not usually enough. Perhaps, the French company was dismantling each unit and reassembling it, but somehow I doubt that. Perhaps they were testing and calibrating the units. We may never know. Whatever they were just doing, it would be to get around supply chain rules that some companies have where they will not buy tools from China, or have to source European kit, or something like that.
Some companies do it for entirely different reasons. Ford used to import Transit vans with seats in them from their Turkish factory into the US. Passenger vans had lower tariffs than cargo vans, and Ford did not want to set up a production facility for vans in the US as it's a small market compared to pickup trucks. The vans were stripped of their interior once they were in the US, and then sold on as cargo vans, effectively bypassing the rules. Presumably, they had the bare minimum interior inside them to comply with the definition of "passenger vehicle". A similar case exists with the Subaru BRAT where the rear plastic bench seat was installed, with carpets and seat-belts, but designed to be trivially removed; this classified the BRAT as a passenger vehicle, and attracted a much lower tax. Customers were expected to remove the seats themselves (simply bolted to the chassis), as they were intentionally barely usable, but a few examples with the seats remain.
Thanks, that is an interesting set of stories.
I remember, from a while back, that digital cameras (and similar), which had video recording capabilities. Suddenly had maximum time limits on the recordings, somewhere in the region of 5 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on the specific manufacturer.
Which was (strongly rumored), to be, to avoid getting an extra tariff (or similar), added to it, because it could then be classed as a camcorder, if it freely recorded, unlimited length video.
I think in many countries, the various common engine sizes, such as just below 2 litres, or 1.8 litres etc. Were to ensure the vehicles, got classed at a lower tax charge band/rate.
(Not strictly tariff/tax related), but I remember, in the UK, a while ago, when, if you bought certain software products, they would include some kind of extra (un-needed), very small/light (cheap to post), hardware item(s), such as a few screws and washers, or something. So that they can sell (class) it as OEM software/licenses, to get round rules, which sort of forced them to do it that way.
It did seem rather silly though. (IIRC, I may have got the details a bit wrong, but it was something along those lines).
Edit:
I think I remember the details better now. It was something like, the stand alone (non-OEM) retail version of windows (at that time, in the past), was something like $150.
But only $50, to install it on a new computer.
So, they would sell you the OEM version for $50, but have to include some extremely cheap item of PC hardware or similar, so that they can count it as OEM sales.
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