INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW
International Trade Law Articles
Customs classification, export controls, sanctions, and the compliance work that keeps cross-border business moving.
426 articles
OFAC Sanctions Compliance: What Businesses Must Do
OFAC sanctions compliance means making sure your company never deals — directly or indirectly — with a person, entity, or country the U.S. has placed …
Personal Liability for Importing Company Owners
Yes — the owner or officer of an importing company can be held personally liable for a customs penalty, even when the business is a corporation or LLC. Forming …
Submitting a Voluntary Self-Disclosure to OFAC
A voluntary self-disclosure (VSD) is when you tell OFAC about your own sanctions violation before OFAC finds it on its own — and doing so can cut the base …
Tariff Mitigation: 5 Strategies to Cut Duty Costs
The most reliable ways to cut a U.S. tariff bill are established, legal customs tools — not guesswork: correct tariff classification, country-of-origin …
Top 10 Tips for Importing into the United States
The importers who clear customs fastest and get audited least do the same handful of things every time: classify goods correctly, value them honestly, confirm …
U.S. Sanctions Lists: A Screening Guide
U.S. sanctions lists are government registries of people, companies, vessels, and aircraft that U.S. persons generally may not do business with — and screening …
USDA Import Regulations: What Importers Must Know
USDA import regulations control who can ship agricultural goods into the United States, from which countries, and with what paperwork — and three separate USDA …
What Is CTPAT? CBP's Supply-Chain Security Program
CTPAT — the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism — is a voluntary program in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) partners with companies that …
Communicating with OFAC: A Sanctions Guide
Talking to OFAC is not a soft “build a relationship” exercise — it is a set of specific, defined channels, and using the right one at the right time …
De-Risking and Sanctions Compliance Explained
De-risking is when a bank or company cuts off an entire category of customers — say, all money-services businesses or all clients in a high-risk region — rather …
Denied Party Screening: How to Do It Right
Denied party screening means checking every person and company in a transaction against the U.S. government’s restricted-party lists before you do …
Does OFAC Sanctions Compliance Apply to My Company?
If your company is a “U.S. person,” OFAC sanctions apply to you — full stop — and many non-U.S. companies are pulled in too when a deal touches U.S. …
Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD): A Compliance Checklist
Enhanced due diligence (EDD) is the deeper level of investigation you apply to high-risk customers, vendors, and counterparties — beyond the standard checks you …
OFAC Sanctions Penalties and How to Avoid Them
Violating U.S. sanctions can cost a business hundreds of thousands of dollars per transaction in civil penalties — and willful violations carry criminal fines …
Real Estate Sanctions Compliance: An OFAC Guide
A real estate professional’s core sanctions duty is simple to state and hard to do: screen every party to a transaction — and the people who really own …
Risk-Based Sanctions Compliance: How to Build It
A risk-based approach to sanctions compliance means sizing your controls to where your business is actually exposed — not applying the same checks everywhere …
Sanctions Audit Checklist: Test Your OFAC Program
A sanctions audit is an independent test of whether your OFAC compliance program actually works — not whether it exists on paper. This checklist walks the audit …
Sanctions Compliance Attestation: What It Means
A compliance attestation is a formal, signed statement in which someone — an employee, a vendor, a counterparty, or a manager — certifies that they understand …
Sanctions Compliance Benchmarking Checklist
Sanctions compliance benchmarking measures your program against external reference points — OFAC’s published framework, its enforcement actions, and peer …
Sanctions Compliance Certification Checklist
A sanctions compliance certification is a formal, documented attestation — by your own leadership, a counterparty, or an outside reviewer — that a sanctions …
