Reckon you’ve seen those China Shipping containers hanging out at the port of Oakland, California, huh? Well, turns out there’s some shady stuff going on with those shipments. Chinese exporters are offering sweet deals to U.S. customers, saying they’ll cover all them tariffs. But surprise, surprise, there’s a whole lot of sneaky business going on behind the scenes to make it happen.
The trick they’re pulling involves a shipping method called “delivered-duty-paid,” where the sellers foot the bill for all import duties. On top of that, they’re lowballing the value of goods and mislabeling them in the shipping docs to dodge paying the full duties. Sneaky, right? These shipments then get funneled through shell companies, set up under foreign names, that take the fall as the “importers of record” responsible for customs filings and tariffs. When these shell companies inevitably bail on the tariff payments, they just close shop and start fresh with a new entity. It’s like a game of hide and seek, but with money.
Now, this whole scheme isn’t exactly new. The allure of underreporting has always been there, especially with tariffs in play. But with Trump cranking up them tariffs in his second term, businesses are going all out to avoid paying up. You can even find ads on Chinese social media offering dirt-cheap delivery prices to the U.S., all thanks to undervaluing and misclassifying shipments. It’s a dirty little secret in the industry, with companies setting up shell entities left and right to get around them tariffs. Not really sure why this matters, but it’s definitely raising some eyebrows.
