Ford to pay $365M in DOJ deal for evading customs tariffs

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Ford Motor Co. agreed to pay $365 million to settle charges levied by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that the automaker purposefully dodged import duties for years by mislabeling and undervaluing hundreds of thousands of cargo vans it brought into the United States from Turkey.

The settlement resolves allegations discovered through an investigation by the DOJ’s Trade Fraud Task Force, which partnered with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the DOJ announced in a press release Monday.

The penalty is one of the largest negotiated by the CBP. Ford argued in settlement negotiations that after the CBP allowed a certain number of vans to enter the United States as passenger vans, it constituted an established and usual practice and that the CBP was in violation by reclassifying the vans to cargo vans.

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