Gregory Husisian Uncovers Current State of Trade and Tariffs in Podcast Appearance

Foley & Lardner LLP partner Gregory Husisian joined the Logistics Management podcast to unravel the current state of international trade as the Trump administration’s tariffs and enforcement priorities continue to evolve.

“There are two aspects to this,” Husisian said of a likely consequence of the heightened tariffs — tariff evasion. “One is the increased incentives of importers to try to not pay the tariffs and the other part of it is the enhanced ability and willingness of the U.S. government to catch people who are doing that.”

“The enhanced incentives are very clear,” Husisian explained, pointing to the increased costs importers face under the escalated tariff rates. He identified the main ways companies may try to get around the increased tariffs, including changing the country of origin to one with lower tariffs, undervaluing or misvaluing goods, adjusting a good’s tariff classification, wrongly claiming goods comply with international trade agreements, and transhipping.

“What they’re not taking into account, however, is that all this data is electronic, and Customs is using AI and doing data mining to compare your import data with all the other companies that are importing similar products, and they’re looking for anomalies, and they have a very high chance of finding these areas,” Husisian continued, noting that enforcement in this area is a major priority for the Trump administration.

Husisian also described the greater involvement of the U.S. Department of Justice in tariff enforcement, ongoing litigation over various trade actions, and how companies are reacting to the developing impact on their overall business model.