@Dread First You mentioned somewhere in this thread that the purchase and delivery of these scientific instruments is the reason why tariffs exist for territories with no permanent human residence. But wouldn't those tariffs be incredibly easy to avoid? What stops Australia from ordering American scientific instruments unto their mainland, and then transport it unto McDonald island, without facing any increased tariff rates they'd get if they ordered directly to McDonald island?
Yes and no? I'm only adjacent to the actual ins and outs of the proverbial customs brokerage machine, so please take what I say with a
huge grain of salt. I'm speaking in the broadest of strokes here, and there are so many complexities and nuances with the topic that I'm only faintly aware of but have no direct experience with. Perhaps another Kiwi in a similar position to mine can elaborate or correct me if I'm wrong on any count, but to that end: not sure how many Kiwis regularly posting in USPOL are familiar with what I'm talking about.
Most huge 3PL firms like Keuhne+Nagel, Expeditors International, DSV Air&Sea, Nippon Express, among a litany of other multinational companies (and their subsidiaries) are also freight forwarders. In a nutshell: these companies have dozens, if not hundreds, of overseas branches scattered across the world that handle both import and export business. Let's say that I'm a garment manufacturer in Vietnam, and a huge American clothing company places an order for 2,500 kilos of women's blouses. It's virtually impossible for that manufacturer to directly sell that quantity of garments to the American company. This is where freight forwarders come into the picture.
Let's further expand on the garment manufacturing example, and arbitrarily pick DSV Air&Sea as the forwarder: their export branch in Hanoi will likely negotiate with both the garment manufacturer selling the product while their import branch in Chicago will negotiate with the importer, and come up with a combined quote that handles both the export-side stuff (i.e. export customs clearance, arranging transport from the factory in Vietnam to the mode of transport, the cost of the actual transport itself, export terminal fees, etc) and the import-side stuff (i.e. import terminal fees, import customs clearance, delivery to the final destination, etc).
This quote that DSV Air&Sea issues to both the exporter and the importer will normally fall under an
incoterm (short for "international commercial term," as defined by the
International Chamber of Commerce). Incoterms explicitly define the responsibilities of the exporter, the importer, and the various forwarder (or forwarders) involved at every step of the process. All of this shit's standardised to a "T" because the last thing anyone wants is for one leg of the process to buckle and say "hold on, I didn't agree to that!" For simplicity's sake, I'll continue the rest of this example assuming
air freight is the mode of transport, since that's fewer incoterms for me to explain. Bear with me here as this is where shit gets really technical, really quickly.
You have EXW (Ex Works) /FCA (Free Carrier) for freight collect shipments, where the exporter bears the least of the costs whilst the importer bears the brunt of it, in addition to the freight charges. EXW terms means that the seller foots almost nothing for the cost of the shipment, whereas FCA means that the seller needs to foot the bill until the shipment gets to the point of transit.
CPT (Carriage Paid To)/CIP (Carriage & Insurance Paid) are freight prepaid terms where the exporter bears a moderate amount of the cost whilst the importer foots the bill for everything else once the cargo arrives at the destination port. The only real distinction between the two terms is whether or not there's any insurance on the cargo in question. Insurance is always negotiable.
Finally we have DAP (Delivered At Place)/DPU (Delivered at Place Unloaded)/DDP (Delivered, Duties Paid) which are all freight prepaid terms where the exporter foots the brunt of the bill and the importer only pays for duties and taxes (i.e. DAP/DPU shipments)
or the seller is fully responsible for all costs on both the export and import side, including all relevant duties and taxes (i.e. DDP shipments).
In the case of a textile shipment, they usually fall under FCA or CPT/CIP terms. Assuming a term of CPT, the garments from Hanoi are uninsured, the importer paid the freight charges in advance, but the exporter bears the costs from the moment of export all the way until the cargo is loaded on the vessel and arrives at the destination port. Then the importer needs to shoulder the rest of the burden once it's properly available for recovery at Chicago O'Hare. The DSV Air&Sea HAN team will notify their ORD team that the cargo departed origin, so that the destination team can get ready to pay the import fees, clear customs, and arrange delivery to the final destination (i.e. a distribution facility, a contracted warehouse, etc).
Circling back to how this would affect scientific instruments coming from nearly uninhabited locations like Antarctica, you'd still have a freight forwarder involved. It's just a matter of which origin branch is geographically closest to arrange transportation from that location. Perhaps DSV Air&Sea has a JHB (Johannesburg) or CPT (Cape Town) team in South Africa who can notify the relevant destination team in America when the time comes to export the shipment. If we're talking about instruments from McDonald Island, then DSV Air&Sea's export team in MEL (Melbourne) or SYD (Sydney) would be more appropriate to begin the export process.
Once that process begins, this is where the real headache starts. All of these scientific instruments require extensive documentation indicating where the cargo was initially manufactured, where the cargo presently is (i.e Antarctica, McDonald Island), where the cargo is ultimately destined for (i.e. the original manufacturing plant or laboratory that designed the cargo in America), the value of the cargo, relevant HTS codes to indicate how the instrument should be treated (i.e. should it be treated as a brand spanking new instrument freshly manufactured and sold to X/Y/Z party, or is it returning from X/Y/Z because it reached EOL?).
Customs fraud is a notoriously tricky subject, I'm sure there are ways to accomplish it, but the real kicker here is that so much of this shit's standardised and digitised to a point where if there's anything remotely suspicious, customs on either the export side or destination side will immediately trigger a red flag and the cargo gets stalled for review, where storage fees are liable to accrue at whatever terminal the cargo's located at during that point in transit. This isn't just limited to scientific instruments, either. Lots of cargo can fall under customs or PGA (partner government agency) review if a red flag is tripped.
I could go on and on here, but I'm kinda exhausted at thinking about all the potential scenarios where customs fraud is likely to be detected. It
does happen and stuff
does fly under the radar, but I just can't fathom a situation where scientific instruments would end up in that type of scenario. Normally fraud happens when an exporter says that their commodity is "books" and it's technically true, but they're exporting banned books to a country that would destroy them if detected (a highly cherry picked example JFYI).
