When tariff rates on imported goods shift significantly — as they did across multiple categories in 2025 — the natural response for most importing businesses is to focus on the cost side of the equation. Can we absorb the increase? Can we renegotiate with suppliers? Can we find alternative sourcing?

Those are legitimate questions. But there's another question that often gets asked too late, or not at all: Have the compliance decisions we're making to manage tariff costs actually created new legal exposure?

This is the question a customs attorney spends a lot of time helping clients answer. And right now, in the current US trade enforcement environment, it's one of the most important questions an importing business can be asking.

How Tariff Changes Create Compliance Risk

Here's the dynamic that catches many importers off guard. When duty rates rise sharply, companies look for ways to reduce the financial impact. Some of those approaches are entirely legitimate — reclassifying products that were misclassified to begin with, restructuring supply chains in response to changed economics, seeking binding rulings that clarify how new tariff provisions apply to their specific products.

Other approaches create serious risk — and the line between the two is not always obvious without experienced legal guidance.

Changing a Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification after a tariff increase to move products into a lower-rate category, when that classification isn't genuinely supported by the product's characteristics, is precisely what CBP and the Trade Fraud Task Force are looking for. Shifting country-of-origin declarations in response to tariff pressures, without a genuine manufacturing change in the supply chain, is another. Using related-party pricing structures or dual invoicing to reduce declared customs value is a third.

The companies that made these changes under pressure — often relying on guidance from brokers or consultants rather than specialized legal counsel — are now in the enforcement crosshairs. A June 2026 Executive Order directed CBP to specifically target these structures and accelerate penalty proceedings against importers who adopted them.

The False Claims Act: A New Dimension of Risk

One development in customs enforcement that many importers don't yet fully appreciate is the expanding application of the False Claims Act to customs violations.

The False Claims Act creates liability for knowingly making false statements to the US government. Courts and prosecutors have increasingly found that false HTS classifications, false country-of-origin declarations, and false customs valuations — when submitted as part of entry filings — constitute false statements to the government that trigger FCA liability.

The financial stakes of FCA exposure are qualitatively different from standard CBP penalty proceedings. FCA damages are trebled — multiplied by three — on top of the duty amount. And the Act includes powerful qui tam provisions that allow whistleblowers — including employees, competitors, and trade partners with knowledge of compliance failures — to file suit on behalf of the government and share in the recovery.

In August 2025, the Justice Department established an interagency Trade Fraud Task Force to pursue customs violations through both administrative and FCA pathways simultaneously. Importers with compliance issues now face overlapping exposure: CBP penalties, back-duty assessments, FCA damages, and in serious cases, parallel criminal prosecution.

A customs law firm with experience in both administrative customs proceedings and federal litigation is the appropriate partner when this level of exposure is on the table.

What a Customs Attorney Actually Does for an Importing Business

The role of a customs attorney is broader than most importers initially assume. It's not just about responding to problems — it's about building a compliance framework that prevents them, and positioning the business to respond effectively when issues arise despite best efforts.

On the proactive side, a customs attorney helps importers obtain binding rulings from CBP that lock in classification positions before goods are imported. They review HTS classifications across a product portfolio and identify positions that are vulnerable to challenge. They advise on supply chain restructuring — helping companies understand which changes are genuinely compliant and which create risk. They develop customs compliance programs that document the business's good-faith efforts in a way that matters for penalty mitigation if an issue ever surfaces.

On the responsive side, when CBP detains or seizes goods, issues penalty notices, initiates an audit, or disputes a classification position, a customs attorney represents the importer in administrative proceedings and, where necessary, before the Court of International Trade. The procedures, timelines, and strategic considerations in customs enforcement are specific to this area of law — and having counsel with deep experience in this exact arena makes a measurable difference in outcomes.

Pre-Importation Planning: The Investment That Pays for Itself

Of all the ways a customs attorney adds value to an importing business, pre-importation planning is often the highest-return service in the portfolio.

US Customs and Border Protection is one of the very few federal agencies that will issue binding decisions before a transaction occurs. An importer who obtains a binding classification ruling before beginning to import a product under that classification has something that is genuinely rare in federal regulatory practice: advance certainty.

That certainty has direct business value. It allows accurate cost projections. It eliminates the risk of duty surprises that erode margins on already-priced contracts. It provides a documented compliance position that dramatically reduces penalty exposure in the event of future audit. And it demonstrates good-faith compliance in a way that matters to CBP adjudicators and to courts.

The customs lawyers at firms with deep CBP relationships — like Stein Shostak Shostak Pollack & O'Hara, LLP, which has been representing importers and exporters in complex customs and trade matters since 1933 and maintains offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai — bring the procedural knowledge and institutional credibility to navigate ruling requests effectively and represent the positions they develop.

Country-of-Origin: The Issue That Won't Go Away

Country-of-origin determination is one of the most contested and consequential areas of US customs compliance in the current environment. It affects duty rates, antidumping and countervailing duty exposure, qualification for preferential trade programs, and compliance with import restrictions on goods from specific countries.

For importers sourcing from manufacturers that have operations across multiple countries — or whose supply chains pass through countries that have historically served as transshipment points for goods of third-country origin — the country-of-origin analysis requires careful attention. CBP applies the "substantial transformation" test and, for many products, specific rules of origin under applicable trade agreements. The analysis is fact-specific, product-specific, and consequential.

Importers who made supply chain changes in response to tariff pressures without a rigorous legal analysis of how those changes affect country-of-origin determinations are particularly exposed in the current enforcement environment. The Trade Fraud Task Force is focusing specifically on situations where origin claims changed in ways that appear timed to tariff implementation rather than genuine operational shifts.

Voluntary Disclosure: When You've Found a Problem

Sometimes an internal compliance review reveals that past entries may have been filed incorrectly — wrong classification, incorrect value, questionable origin declaration. What happens next matters enormously.

Voluntary disclosure to CBP, managed through experienced customs counsel, significantly reduces penalty exposure relative to an enforcement action initiated by the government. CBP's mitigation guidelines provide substantial penalty reductions for good-faith voluntary disclosures that are complete, accurate, and accompanied by payment of any duties owed.

Navigating voluntary disclosure properly — knowing when it's appropriate, what it should include, how to frame the disclosure to maximize mitigation credit, and what follow-up commitments make sense — is work that requires a customs attorney who has handled these proceedings before.

The Time to Act Is Now

The US customs enforcement landscape in 2026 is unlike anything most importing businesses have experienced. The combination of elevated tariff rates, expanded enforcement authority, interagency coordination, and FCA exposure has created a risk environment that rewards proactive legal engagement and punishes inattention.

The customs attorney relationship that produces the best outcomes is one that begins before a problem develops — not after CBP has already knocked on the door.

Start the Conversation That Protects Your Business

Reach out to a US customs attorney with the experience and CBP relationships to evaluate your current compliance posture and help you get ahead of what's coming. The conversation is more important now than it has been in a very long time.