The United States government maintains a complex regulatory system for the collection of customs duties on imported merchandise.  Violations of these regulations can lead to both civil and criminal penalties.  The principal agency responsible for enforcing United States import regulations is U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”).  We help clients develop, implement, and monitor their customs compliance programs.  We work with clients in the area of classification, valuation, etc., in order to achieve optimum duty savings. 

We represent interested parties in disputes with CBP as to the proper tariff treatment of imported merchandise and in penalty actions arising from alleged violations of United States import laws and regulations.  The actions of CBP are generally subject to judicial review in the United States Court of International Trade, and we regularly handle appeals to the Court of International Trade of denied protests and other adverse rulings by CBP. 

We also help our clients benefit from various special customs duty programs such as duty drawback, foreign trade zones, the Generalized System of Preferences (“GSP”), the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act, the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (“NAFTA”). 

Our work in Customs enforcement is frequently an outgrowth of our Antidiversion and Anticounterfeiting practice and of our ITC Section 337 practice.  Thus, we work closely with CBP and with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to enforce exclusion orders issued by the U.S. International Trade Commission and to enforce the registered trademarks and copyrights of our clients against infringement, counterfeiting, or piracy by imported goods.

RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS BY D&H ATTORNEYS

J. Kevin Horgan, Cold Chain Distribution for Pharmaceuticals, presented in seminar entitled CUSTOMS INFORMED Compliance and C-TPAT, sponsored by Pharma IQ, a division of the International Quality & Productivity Center, Philadelphia, PA (Sept. 24, 2008).

J. Kevin Horgan, U.S. Rules of Origin:  An Introduction to the High Stakes and Peculiar Rules for Determining the Origin of Imported Merchandise, Corporate Counsel’s International Adviser, issue No. 94 (March 1993).

J. Kevin Horgan, Trademark Counterfeiting in the United States and Abroad: “The Barbie Doll Case,” presented in seminar entitled Detention of Imported Merchandise Suspected of Infringing a U.S. Copyright After Miss America Organization v. Mattel, San Francisco, CA (Nov. 8, 1991).

Donald E. deKieffer, Political and Policy Dimensions on Foreign Trade Zones:  Expansion or the Beginning of the End? 18 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 481 (Summer 1985) (co-authored with George W. Thompson).

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