26. Trade · Notable · Contested — excluded from counts
Expand the DHS crackdown on CCP e-sellers and warehouse operators
Printed page 790 26. Trade · from “The Case for Fair Trade”
“Reinvigorate and expand the DHS crackdown on the CCP’s use of e-sellers (including third-party sellers) and the shippers and operators of major warehouses such as Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba to flood U.S. markets with counterfeit and pirated goods.”
What has happened
- Partially done
CBP made the closure permanent by regulation and, unusually, said why in enforcement terms: the rule is signed out of CBP's Intellectual Property Rights and E-Commerce Division and records that low-value shipments carried "firearms, counterfeit merchandise, prohibited items, illicit fentanyl, and other illicit drugs", with CBP field staff estimating 34.8 million violations in type 86 entries in FY2024. That is the counterfeit-goods problem the Quote names, addressed by ending the entry type rather than by an enforcement program against named sellers, shippers or warehouse operators.
- Partially done
The single biggest piece of this ask was delivered by closing the channel rather than by pursuing the sellers. EO 14256 ended duty-free de minimis treatment for products of the PRC and Hong Kong, including postal packages, from 2025-05-02 - the $800 route through which Chinese e-sellers ship directly to American buyers. It is an enforcement measure against the channel, not the "crackdown on the CCP's use of e-sellers ... and the shippers and operators of major warehouses" that the Quote asks DHS to reinvigorate.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
This item and #2077 share both instruments and are leveled differently on purpose. #2077 asks for the de minimis exemption to end for China, and it ended, so it is done. This one asks for a DHS enforcement campaign against e-sellers, shippers and warehouse operators to be reinvigorated and expanded; the same instruments deliver a large piece of that by removing the channel, which is partial, and no allowlisted record shows an expanded DHS or HSI program aimed at the sellers and warehouses themselves.
Also in the window and read but not used: DHS’s notice regarding the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List (2026-08-03), which is forced labor rather than counterfeiting, and CBP’s Enhanced Air Cargo Advance Screening final rule (2025-11-21), which is a security screening measure whose text mentions counterfeits only in passing.
- Action
- expand
- Object
- DHS crackdown on CCP e-sellers, shippers, and warehouse operators
- ID
- 2089