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Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

I'm in France, maybe I should open a proxy. You order through me, I reexpedite to the US, with a French stamp lol.

Somebody absolutely should and will open this business. Versions of it already exist in Northern Ireland after Brexit.

A slightly greyer version: you open the box, add a ribbon to every item, repackage it, mark it "final assembly in France".

Unfortunately for you, your business probably gets outcompeted by the guy who has the same idea in Canada.

It does not work. You have to declare the real source of the merchandise. Or it has to go through "substantial transformation" so that is called "Made in France".

Country of origin is taxed and not country of shippment.

And nobody ever lied on those Chinese envelopes with the value declaration. ;)

Also, I can tell you that the country of origin field has one of the lowest entry qualities of all fields. People just don't bother, and customs don't have the capacity. Also, depending on your warehousing, there is a good chance you simply don't know. If something in your item bucket came from either China, Vietnam, Malaysia or the Philippines, what are you gonna write?

I bought an instrument cluster for my car for 700$ a year or two ago and they totally put something like "broken car parts - 20$" on the declaration.

How does what you say not make it work though? Are you aware that people lie for financial gains?

Sure, but then it's less of a fun side business and just becomes straight up smuggling.

A reputable business might not be interested in smuggling, but if you have incentivized smuggling, it will definitely occur

145% tariffs are practically designed to encourage smuggling.

I've seen a few headlines in our local news here in Australia about how nobody knows what amount of Chinese ingredients will result in the final product being hit with Chinese tariffs, even though the products are assembled here.

Russia has 0% tariffs, so they're probably going to ship through there.

China is 'best friends' with Russia, Russia is best friends with Trump. Huge piles of cash for everyone on the inside there.

That’s already happening.

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