TBML

Companies importing goods from China are increasingly using accounting maneuvers, middlemen, and in some cases apparent fraud to reduce the value of shipments entering the United States and cut the tariffs they owe.

A Mexican national pleaded guilty to participating in a two-year, multimillion-dollar black-market peso exchange conspiracy that laundered drug trafficking proceeds through Texas to Mexico, the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday. 

Trade misinvoicing is occurring at “massive scale” across Asian supply chains, with discrepancies in reported invoice values reaching a record $1.7 trillion in 2022 across developing Asia.

The White House is weighing a new round of national-security tariffs on several industries after a Supreme Court ruling last week struck down many of President Trump’s second-term levies, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Trade misinvoicing may have siphoned roughly $3.64 trillion in illicit value out of the Western hemisphere over the decade from 2013 to 2022, with annual “trade value gaps” climbing to a new high of about $473.2 billion in 2022, according to a new report by Global Financial Integrity (GFI). 

Panama’s Supreme Court is nearing a decision in a lawsuit that could void a Hong Kong company’s license to operate two container ports at either end of the Panama Canal, The Wall Street Journal reported. 

French authorities are investigating a crude oil tanker suspected of operating within a “shadow fleet” moving Russian oil, after the vessel “Boracay” anchored off Saint-Nazaire, Reuters said citing the French Navy.