Isn't this what Fedex is doing? Complying with a stupid law but challenging its legality in a court. Not sure where you get the idea that Fedex is breaking the law.
I don't want to make a moral judgement whether Fedex should win the case, but bringing the case to a court has great legal merits. It can force the administration to clarify the ban, and help many other companies which are as confused as Fedex.
We'd crate up the equipment then nail down the lid. Then a guy from customs would come out and pull the lid off and rummage around inside checking for contraband and to make sure we weren't shipping things that were on the tech exports naughty list.
They do. I don't think you realize just how many packages enter the United States on a daily basis though and that Customs only physically inspects a very tiny portion of those packages.
Each year, more than 11 million maritime containers arrive at our seaports. At land borders, another 11 million arrive by truck and 2.7 million by rail. Each of those containers could contain 1 shipment between 1 shipper and 1 importer of record or it could contain dozens or hundreds of individual shipments from multiple shippers to multiple importers of record.
Then you see tens of thousands of packages enter the United States daily via air.
The United States has 328 ports of entry in the country and 13 pre-clearance offices in other countries. In 2018 the United States imported $3.1 trillion and exported $2.5 trillion in goods and services.