Chinese suppliers are offering U.S. Amazon sellers a tariff solution—but it’s not legal
Some of these suppliers are trying to keep their businesses humming by offering a simple—but illegal—solution to U.S. Amazon sellers: lying about the value of the Amazon merchandise you are importing to the U.S. in an effort to lower the duties you'll have to pay under the new slate of tariffs.
Yes, that sounds a lot like customs fraud.
In emails and WeChat messages viewed by Fortune, around a half dozen Chinese suppliers proposed such illegal workarounds to executives from a mid-sized household goods brand with a large presence on Amazon.
"Many US companies use a lower value invoice to make customs clearance to reduce the tariff," one supplier wrote to the U.S. brand. "You can think about it."
"We can revise the declared value on commercial invoices to help duty costs," another said.
Some also proposed another workaround called Delivery Duty Paid or DDP shipping. In this scenario, the supplier would handle getting the goods through customs, rather than the U.S. brand, and lie about the value of the shipment essentially on the brand's behalf. The goal of this, at least in part, would be to create an artificial buffer between the U.S. seller and customs.
