U.S. Customs Seizes 75 Shipments of Counterfeit Goods Imports each day

THE NUMBERS: Counterfeit goods seizures by U.S. Customs* –
FY2021 value $3.3 billion
Number of seizures 27,115

FY2016 value $1.4 billion
Number of seizures 31,560

FY 2011 value $1.1 billion
Number of seizures 24,792

* CBP data; “value” is at the “Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price” of an authentic item.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Here’s fashion magazine Allure with a closeup on the criminal fringe of the global manufacturing economy, through the lens of a 2016 seizure of counterfeit perfume in New York:

“Five men have been arrested in New York by U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) for knowingly selling counterfeit designer perfumes made with ingredients including antifreeze and urine across at least seven states … The authorities reportedly recovered approximately 10,000 boxes of the faux scents, whose ingredients included the aforementioned urine and antifreeze along with ‘other unpleasant, flammable, or dangerous chemicals that burn when applied to the skin.’ ”

Background: The most recent big-picture study of trade in counterfeits, a 2021 report from the OECD, estimated an upper limit of $464 billion worth of counterfeit goods flowing across borders in 2019. This would have been 2.5% of that year’s $19.8 trillion in goods exports — not much different from the 3.3% counterfeit share they estimated for 2016 and the same as their 2.5% estimate for 2013. By the OECD’s account, 90% of counterfeit goods come from five places — China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates — and the most frequently counterfeited products include shoes, clothes, perfumes and cosmetics (making Allure's New York arrest story a pretty representative case), along with watches and leather products like luggage and handbags.

U.S. counterfeit seizure statistics likewise seem to show a fairly stable level of counterfeit trade (or at least of interdictions of counterfeit goods) over the past decade, after a sharp rise in the 2000s. CBP’s FY2011 report tallied 24,792 seizures of counterfeit shipments (about 70 each day), and the 2016 report noted a higher total, at nearly 32,000. The 2021 total, at 27,115 seizures, was in between. Three ways to look at these totals:

(a) Number and kind of products: The 27,115 seizures in 2021 in turn brought in over 115,000 different "lines" of products, which reflect OECD’s report on the most frequently counterfeited goods fairly well: 73,367 seizures of counterfeit designer clothes, shoes, and luggage; 3,155 of personal products like the counterfeit perfumes, medicines, and medical products (including, in that troubled year, 35 million substandard masks and 38,154 useless or dangerous faux-COVID test kits); 5,380 sets of consumer electronics items, and 1,083 shipments of aircraft and auto parts.

(b) Origins: Here the U.S. statistics slightly differ from those of the OECD. As with OECD, they report China and Hong Kong as the top sources, accounting for 51,787 of the 115,000 “lines” of counterfeit goods, and also have Turkey in third with 10,781 lines. The remaining two are the Philippines with 6,416, and Colombia with 5,912.

(c) Transport methods: Counterfeit goods most frequently travel to the U.S. (assuming that CBP's seizure statistics more or less accurately reflect the counterfeiting industry's logistics choices) by express deliveries and mail shipments. CBP’s figures show 16,926 of the seized shipments arriving via express delivery, while 7,293 arrived by mail, 2,274 by maritime cargo, and 622 by unspecified other methods. The maritime cargo seizures, however, were apparently very large and valuable; weighted towards consumer electronics counterfeits, they accounted for $1.5 billion or half the total value of all seizures.

The amount of counterfeit goods which get all the way to consumers is by nature uncertain. The CDC, looking closely at medicine, says that “in high-income countries, such as the United States, less than 1% of medicines sold are counterfeit.” Medicines, though, are presumably an area where providers are especially cautious and law enforcement especially vigilant. CBP’s advice to consumers (and the message implicit in Allure’s graphic description of counterfeit perfume ingredients), though, is to be careful with what you buy: “Counterfeit products are low quality and can cause injuries or even death when used.”