Ford says it could face $1.3 billion in new penalties on Transit imports

WASHINGTON — Ford Motor Co. claimed Thursday it could deal with up to $one.three billion in penalties in a extensive-working dispute over import responsibilities paid on Ford Transit Join vehicles.

The No. two U.S. automaker claimed after the Supreme Court docket declined to listen to its attractiveness in 2020 that it paid amplified responsibilities for some prior imports, furthermore desire.

U.S. Customs and Border Security (CBP) is now trying to get added responsibilities of $181 million and is thinking about trying to get a financial penalty of “as significantly as $652 million to $one.three billion,” Ford claimed. The automaker additional that it would vigorously protect its steps and mentioned any penalty “would be primarily based on our stage of culpability as identified by the courts.”

CBP ruled in 2013 that Transit Connects imported as passenger wagons and later converted into cargo vans were matter to the twenty five per cent responsibility applicable to cargo vehicles, rather than the two.5 per cent passenger car responsibility.

The vans were assembled in Turkey.

The Justice Department claimed Ford “designed, marketed, offered, and delivered the van to shoppers exclusively as a two-individual cargo van. But to avoid the greater rate of responsibility that applies to cargo vans as as opposed to vans principally designed for passenger transport, petitioner imported every single Transit Join … with a non permanent, cheap rear seat that was designed to be promptly eradicated as shortly as the van cleared” Customs.

The governing administration mentioned the seats lacked head restraints and were “upholstered with charge-minimized cloth that did not match that of the front seats.”

Ford argued the rear passenger seat achieved all federal security standards, had seat belts for each seating placement, anchors for the rear seats and seat belts and were “road-authorized passenger vehicles.”

The twenty five per cent tariff stems from a nineteen sixties trade war involving frozen hen, and the more substantial tariff on cargo vehicles is regarded as the “hen tax.”