By Matthew DellaBetta · July 2026
In August 2025, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced a cross-agency Trade Fraud Task Force with the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), promising “robust enforcement” against importers and other parties who evade tariffs. What that would mean in practice was anyone’s guess. The tariff landscape was, and remains, in constant flux. Rates have shifted with each new presidential pronouncement, entire categories of duties have come and gone, and in February 2026 the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA-based tariffs in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, unwinding billions in collections. It was reasonable to wonder what the future held for tariff enforcement. The answer arrived in July 2026, when DOJ and DHS jointly issued A Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement (the “Guide”). Although the Guide offers many notable commentaries, one sentence distills its core message:
The era when a company can claim ignorance of its upstream partners’ activities is over.
Whatever uncertainty remains about tariff rates, there is none about tariff enforcement. The duties at the center of the Guide rest on statutes untouched by the Supreme Court’s ruling, and the Guide makes clear that the government intends to police them aggressively. A few priorities now stand out.
1. The DOJ intends to bring serious criminal prosecutions for trade fraud.
The Task Force promised duty-collection actions, False Claims Act suits, and “wherever appropriate, parallel criminal prosecutions.” The new Guide shows that DOJ institutionalized that promise by creating the Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section. This prosecution section sits inside DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, the same division driving the government’s record health care fraud takedowns. The Guide also makes clear that DOJ wants to shift customs fraud cases from administrative penalty matters to criminal prosecutions.
The Guide is specific about the charges prosecutors intend to bring. The centerpiece is 18 U.S.C. § 545, which the Guide calls “the most expansive tool in the DOJ’s arsenal.” It covers smuggling, passing false documents through the customhouse, importing goods “contrary to law,” and even down-chain dealing in goods known to be illegally imported. Because Section 545 violations are “specified unlawful activities,” the proceeds of trade fraud, such as reselling misclassified goods or wiring the tariff “savings” back to a parent company, can also support money-laundering charges. Both offenses serve as RICO predicates, and RICO reaches executives and management-level employees who never touched a customs form. The Guide’s discussion of these offenses makes clear that DOJ intends to bring serious indictments, not administrative slaps, against the targets of its investigations.
2. DOJ expects tariff and customs compliance to become a “core component” of risk management policy for businesses.
The Guide’s posture on corporate responsibility is unambiguous, and one passage illustrates how it expects companies to dedicate serious resources to tariff compliance:
Failure to modernize oversight is a strategic risk with potentially serious or even disastrous consequences. When a company fails to implement effective controls, it leaves itself vulnerable to being used as a conduit for illicit trade and to significant reputational harm, as well as substantial criminal, civil, and administrative penalties. Indeed, in such cases, the DOJ will look closely at whether the failure was a result of negligence, reckless disregard, willful blindness to signs of fraud, or intentional criminality. We encourage companies to treat trade compliance as a core component of their risk management strategy, recognizing that a transparent and truthful supply chain is the best defense against legal exposure.
It appears that prosecutors will evaluate tariff and customs compliance failures on a spectrum that runs from negligence to intentional criminality when deciding the appropriate enforcement action. Where a company land is the difference between an administrative penalty and a criminal indictment, and the company’s own oversight practices, or the absence of them, will likely supply the evidence.
DOJ now expects companies to build tariff and customs compliance into the enterprise as they build financial controls. This means that DOJ will look to see whether companies audit supply chains, verify what partners represent, and escalate red flags when they encounter them.
3. The government is not focused solely on the largest importers.
When the Task Force launched, some assumed that enforcement would concentrate on the largest importers because those companies move the most volume and pay the most duties. The record tells a different story. The government’s early False Claims Act settlements involved mid-size, product-specific companies: a multi-layered wood flooring importer ($8.1 million), a patio furniture company ($4.9 million), a quartz surface products importer ($12.4 million), and a plastic resin distributor ($6.8 million). Both the launch announcement and the Guide make the intended reach explicit: the government will pursue “importers and other parties,” including down-chain wholesalers, transporters, and buyers who deal in goods they know were imported illegally. None of them can outsource their exposure to the importer of record.
4. The DOJ wants to promote whistleblower actions to target tariff fraud.
DOJ frames the knowing underpayment of duties as a “reverse false claim” under the False Claims Act, which carries treble damages. The Guide makes clear that DOJ wants whistleblowers to bring lawsuits on the government’s behalf. Indeed, the Task Force announcement expressly solicits referrals from domestic industries harmed by unfair trade practices and routes tips through the Criminal Division’s Corporate Whistleblower Program. In practice, every competitor and former employee who understands a company’s tariff position is now a potential enforcer with a financial incentive.
Conclusion
We have seen this pattern before in other areas of federal enforcement: the government takes conduct long treated as a regulatory matter, reframes it as fraud, charges it criminally, and invites whistleblowers to police it. Early cases show that the targets are not just industry giants. Any business that imports should assume that the government will examine today’s customs positions later, with the benefit of hindsight, treble damages, and a cooperating insider. Expect more of these cases, not fewer.
Sources: U.S. Department of Justice & U.S. Department of Homeland Security, A Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement (July 2026); DOJ Office of Public Affairs, “Departments of Justice and Homeland Security Partnering on Cross-Agency Trade Fraud Task Force” (Aug. 29, 2025); Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. ___ (2026); Executive Order 14411, “Strengthening Customs Enforcement” (June 3, 2026); 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733; 19 U.S.C. § 1307.
