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Howard Waddell: Customs policy a double-edged sword

Howard Waddell  —  10/26/2008 6:36 am

I received a telephone call on Friday morning indicating that a shipment we had made to our European distributor was being held by U.S. Customs because of a possible ITAR violation -- shipping "weapons of war" without prior authorization from the State Department.

The International Traffic in Arms Regulations is a set of U.S. government regulations that control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the U.S. Munitions List. ITAR regulations dictate that information and material pertaining to defense- and military-related technologies may only be shared with U.S. persons unless approval from the Department of State is received or a special exemption is used. United States companies can face heavy fines if the Department of State discovers they have, without approval or the use of an exemption, provided non-U.S.persons with access to ITAR-protected products or information such as designs, test data, processes, software code, etc. (Source: Wikipedia)

I mentioned to the customs officer that we have been sending the same products to Europe for several years now, and the customs officer acknowledged that my company had in fact sent 21 shipments in the last two years to the same destination without ITAR being raised as an issue.

When I pointed out that the shipment in question consisted primarily of reproductions of swords from the 1982 film "Conan the Barbarian" starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and were not, in fact, "weapons of war" per se, the dutiful customs officer pointed out that the U.S. Marine Corps still uses swords, therefore swords are still considered to be "weapons of war." Unable to resist, I pointed out that the Marine Mamaluke saber is purely ceremonial and not a weapon, but she assured me that it still counted (as it was listed on the U.S. Munitions List) and that our shipment would be delayed until the State Department came down with a ruling in our case.

Though the State Department feels that ITAR places negligible burdens on American business, it took my wife and me half of a workday (so far) to get the proper forms filled out and to prepare and send supporting documentation.

Piqued, I did a little research on ITAR and found that, though I admit that my company's issue is very small potatoes, ITAR has done a great deal to derail the export of U.S. products overseas on a much larger scale, and is yet another example of how our government does its darnedest to keep American business globally uncompetitive.

But I am comforted that our ever-vigilant government is keeping dangerous advanced military technology such as the Conan swords out of the hands of our enemies.

Howard Waddell operates Albion Swords Ltd. in New Glarus.

Howard Waddell  —  10/26/2008 6:36 am