Bloomberg Quotes Suzanne Kane on Border Tariff Battle
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Suzanne Kane, counsel in the international trade practice at Akin Gump, has been quoted in the Bloomberg article “The Case of the Vanishing Van, And Its Meaning for the Trade War.” The article reports on a move by Ford Motor Co. that has enabled it to avoid steep import duties on some of its vehicles, but has also landed the company in a legal battle with the Trump administration.
According to the article, Ford imported passenger vans, then removed a row of seats and sold the vehicles as cargo vans. This allowed the company to pay just a 2.5 percent import duty on the vans, because they were classified at the border as passenger vehicles, rather than a 25 percent tariff on light trucks that includes cargo vans.
U.S. Customs, the article notes, accused Ford of hiding its true intentions. While the Court of International Trade ruled in Ford’s favor in 2017, the government has appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard oral arguments yesterday.
The decision, Kane said, could impact how Customs rules in other duty cases, complicating the ability of companies to avoid U.S. tariffs imposed by the Trump administration since last year. “It’s even higher stakes now,’’ she added.
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