Justice Department creates global trade enforcement unit to target tariff evasion

The Justice Department on Tuesday created the Global Trade & Commerce Enforcement Section inside its National Fraud Enforcement Division, putting import, customs and tariff violations under a more aggressive criminal lens. Officials unveiled the move at a Customs and Border Protection inspection warehouse near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where confiscated illegal vaping devices and drones were displayed as examples of the goods federal prosecutors want to hit harder.

The announcement came with new criminal charges in two Chicago gold jewelry cases in which defendants were accused of falsely declaring countries of origin to evade tariffs. Those cases underscore the department’s message to importers, logistics firms and retailers: customs misstatements and tariff schemes are no longer being treated only as paperwork disputes, but as potential fraud cases with criminal exposure for companies and executives.

The new section builds on the Trade Fraud Task Force launched by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security on Aug. 29, 2025. In less than a year, the agencies said they have surpassed $1 billion in combined civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures and publicly charged losses. The task force’s remit covers Section 301 tariff evasion, antidumping duties, countervailing duties, forced-labor violations in supply chains and imported goods that threaten public health and safety.

The Justice Department had already said the task force would use the False Claims Act, the Tariff Act of 1930 and, where appropriate, parallel criminal prosecutions. The new structure pushes that approach further by concentrating trade cases inside a fraud division, a sign that customs undervaluation, transshipment schemes and sanctions-linked imports could face closer coordination across agencies and more severe penalties than many companies have faced in the past.

The department also released A Resource Guide to Trade Fraud Enforcement on July 14, 2026, describing it as the first joint comprehensive framework of its kind. Colin McDonald, who was sworn in as the first assistant attorney general for the National Fraud Enforcement Division on April 1, 2026, has said customs violators often treated trade fraud as a cost of doing business, but the department now intends to bring the full weight of federal enforcement to bear.

The trade push extends beyond Chicago. In New Jersey, prosecutors charged an Indonesian jewelry company, its co-owner and two employees with evading more than $86 million in customs duties and tariffs on more than $1.2 billion in jewelry imports. Together, the Chicago and New Jersey cases show how quickly customs enforcement is moving from the civil side of government into the criminal docket.