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Customs agents took to the ramparts to protect Americans from TV Ducks — cotton products made to sit on the arm of a couch and hold a TV remote control. Robert Capps, who owned a small company in Skyland, North Carolina, ordered a large shipment of the products from China — but the Customs Service prohibited their entry in 1995. Customs claimed that the little novelty items belonged in the same tariff category as bedspreads — and thus that Capps needed a textile import quota before he could import them. No U.S. company was making TV Ducks, but Customs officials were hellbent on protecting American consumers from the product.

by James Bovard

Donald Trump’s re-election assures that protectionism will become even more fashionable inside the Beltway. Trump recently declared that tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” and the exaltation of trade barriers has become the latest political mania. Washington hustlers are loudly promising to enrich the nation by selectively blockading American ports. Unfortunately, the Trump team and the growing horde of protectionist pundits sound clueless about America’s long record of trade follies.If the government cannot even intelligently and consistently define an athletic shoe or phone booth, how likely is it that government trade restrictions will actually benefit America as a nation?
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Instead, we are encouraged to presume that politicians merely need to issue a few commands and federal bureaucrats will instantly apply their wisdom to remedy our economic problems. But unless politicians intend to ban all imports or inflict the same tax on all imports, then government officials will need to make distinctions between products.

In the past, Customs Service employees wrestled heroically with great questions such as “Is a popcorn popper an electrothermic appliance or an electrical article?” and “Is a jeep a truck or a car?” The United States has thousands of different tariff classifications, with tariffs ranging from zero to more than 100 percent. Naturally, tariff-classification rulings are often disputed with a passion that would have made St. Thomas Aquinas proud.

Thousands of tariff categories in the past were restricted by import quotas. When Customs Service decisions change a product’s tariff classification from unrestricted to restricted, the ruling can effectively ban imports.

The absurdity of custom classifications

Customs Service officials worked overtime in late 1989 to protect America from foreign shoelaces. Customs prohibited the import of a shipment of 30,000 tennis shoes from Indonesia because the shoe boxes contained an extra pair of shoelaces. One Customs official decided that the extra laces were a clothing product that required a separate quota license for importing, and his decision set a precedent for the entire Customs Service. None of the tennis shoe importers were thinking of the extra laces as anything but part of the tennis shoe, and thus they were caught in their tracks without textile import quotas for shoelaces. (Some new tennis shoes have eyelets for more than one set of laces.)

Customs proceeded to establish intricate rules for shoelace imports. In a judicious ruling, the U.S. government announced that an extra pair of shoelaces would be permitted in a box of tennis shoes as long as the extra shoelaces were laced into the shoes and were color-coordinated with the shoes. But Customs warned importers, “We note that where multiple pairs of laces of like colors and/or designs are imported … a presumption is raised” that the shoelaces are not actually part of the shoe. Customs acted in the nick of time to prevent 250 million Americans from acquiring too many shoelaces of the same color.

Customs agents took to the ramparts to protect Americans from TV Ducks — cotton products made to sit on the arm of a couch and hold a TV remote control. Robert Capps, who owned a small company in Skyland, North Carolina, ordered a large shipment of the products from China — but the Customs Service prohibited their entry in 1995. Customs claimed that the little novelty items belonged in the same tariff category as bedspreads — and thus that Capps needed a textile import quota before he could import them. No U.S. company was making TV Ducks, but Customs officials were hellbent on protecting American consumers from the product. Capps hired a lawyer, who quickly convinced a federal judge to overturn the edict. However, the Justice Department appealed the decision and dragged the case out for a year and half, costing Capps millions of dollars in lost sales before a higher panel of federal judges again trounced the agency.

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