Counterfeit Goods
January 11th, 2012 tmccoy
You might think that the primary job of U. S. Customs and Border Protection is to catch drug dealers trying to smuggle things over the border, or that the Immigration service stops illegal aliens trying to sneak into the United States. But both services are also the reason that the United States has seized 25,000 shipments of counterfeit goods from overseas manufacturers.
This year, it’s not so much copycat designer shoes, but consumer electronic goods, especially cell phones, to the tune of $39 million. The primary offending country for counterfeit goods was China, with 62% of the seizures. Hong Kong was second, with 18% and India followed with 3%. How big a business are counterfeit products? If the products sold to American consumers had been real, they would have sold for $1.1 billion!
