Importers tangled up in red tape of Trump tariffs

Donald Trump promised to slash red tape for business. His tariff regime has gotten American companies increasingly tangled up in it.

- BY JORDAN FABIAN, LAURA CURTIS AND ENDA CURRAN

A U.S. CUSTOMS and Border Protection agent reviews a shipment of tools at a port of entry in Nogales, Ariz.

The president's ever-changing trade rules are piling up mountains of extra work for firms trying to follow them. Smaller ones in particular are struggling to cope with unprecedented requirements to trace paper trails for every widget and gadget, showing what's in them and where they came from.

The bureaucratic burden is a less-discussed consequence of Trump’s move to hike import taxes to a hundred-year high. America Inc., which broadly cheered his election win, is bristling at the direct cost of tariffs. Uncertainty around their on-again, off-again rollout is a drag on investment plans, too. The challenges of compliance add another layer of hurt.

One business owner who has experienced it all is David Zampierin, the founder of Idaho-based Zamp Racing, which makes helmets, suits and other kit for auto-racing drivers.

He spent July glued to a screen tracking a shipment from China, then realized it wouldn't arrive before Trump’s trade truce with Beijing was due to expire. His solution: Park the stuff in a bonded warehouse in South Korea, then wait and see. When Trump extended the truce into November, Zampierin immediately ordered his goods to be shipped.

“Even though the pandemic was crazy, there was kind of a certainty there. Now it’s more about the confusion,” he said. “I've been doing this for 40 years. And it’s never been this complicated.”

Take the administration’s widening of steel and aluminum duties to include hundreds of categories of consumer items and manufacturing inputs, from motorcycles to baby gear. Importers must be able to document not just the value of metals contained in the goods, but also where the steel was poured and the aluminum smelted, according to customs broker Pete Mento.