That is as old as customs and tariffs and is called "smuggling".
And about equally as long it is frowned upon by those who impose customs and tariffs.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
167 points (96.6% liked)
No Stupid Questions
40206 readers
708 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
People do this in my country. If they have a friend or somebody they know going to Hong Kong they ask them to buy a laptop and declare it as personal device going back.
Yeah. I know Indonesia is cracking down on phone smuggling now by locking carrier access to registered IMEIs
If you bring one back you get a cheaper import fee if you declare it immediately
In some countries, you need to declare expensive items when you are leaving the country, otherwise you pay the tariff when you return.
Makes me think of an article from years ago, where police in Venezuela arrested a kid for biking across the border for some candy.
They're working from a playbook that's been around for a while.
Smuggling is easier than you think, being stupid is a requirement for law enforcement. Especially in the USA
Just observe the system, go through a couple of times, you'll see the cracks and should be able to figure it out from there, especially if it's just to circumvent tariffs and not import illegal goods.
Ask yourself, is it worth the legal system to pursue this matter if it's relatively minor?
Chances are you'll just get a slap on the wrist, but there is ALWAYS risk when it comes to this stuff, so also ask yourself is it worth doing it in the first place?
Happy smuggling and remember borders are imaginary! :)
The tariffs only apply to the USA, not to the whole of America
What do you mean
America is a continent with 30 countries on it. Only one out of these 30 has deemed it a good idea to elect an orange felon as their president. It is called the USA.
You are wrong. North America is a continent, and South America is a continent. Of all the countries on these two continents, one is colloquially referred to as "America" by everyone who isn't an internet weirdo. Absolutely nobody else in the western hemisphere refers to themselves as "America" or "Americans"
Good point
o7 cmdr
I used to work with a guy from Syria who had US/Canadian citizenship. He said every time he crossed the border he budgeted in 3 extra hours while he was detained.
"What are you in for?"
"Smuggling dark soy sauce."
This work between certain states. For instance, you can drive into Oregon and shop with no sales tax then return to California or Washington with your goods.
Liquor is also much cheaper in some states than others—you can really stock up if you are already driving through a state.
Can attest to liquor being cheaper in some states. My parents have crossed state lines in order to do things and they can get not only cheaper liquor but also slightly cheaper gas across state line as well.
California has sales and use tax that requires you to disclose untaxed purchases made online or out of state. Probably get away with it, but is illegal to not report. You do you.
Fireworks are legal in New Hampshire but not Massachusetts. The MA police will stake out NH firework shops near the border before July 4 and pull over MA cars they see loading up once they cross back into the state…
The border patrol doesn't really care as long as the amounts are small. A lot of times, border patrol will even provide the limits.
If you are going to go over and you get inspected, you're going to need a good reason for what you've got. For instance, going for a day trip but coming back with a week's worth of clothes are going to be a red flag. Border patrol is also going to look at condition of the items if they are at the point they are inspecting the items.
Unless you can fly the Kessel run in twelve parsecs, you should probably leave the smuggling to career criminals.
Borders are patrolled by CBP (customs and border protection). Part of CBPs job is to charge you tarrifs on the stuff you're bringing into the country.
Sometimes I've had to pay import tarrifs many times when crossing back and forth (for the same thing over-and-over). Its best not to cross the border with expensive stuff.
Sometimes I’ve had to pay import tarrifs many times when crossing back and forth (for the same thing over-and-over). Its best not to cross the border with expensive stuff.
Bruh, that's is so scummy.
Yes. But only one or two things at a time. It's illegal but like you said if you just say you had it when you entered Canada you'll probably get away with it.
If you come over with 100 laptops in your trunk you will almost certainly be forced to pay import duties on them.
Basically if you're trying to save some money personally yes it's possible. Under a certain dollar amount you can usually even do it legally as long as you don't intend to sell it. But if you're planning on making a business out of doing this and selling it in the US cheap then you're gonna get caught
OP discovers smuggling.
"Pssst pssst, I've got Shaoxing wine, Three Crabs brand fish sauce..."
This instantly put the Resident Evil 4 "what are you buyin'" guy's voice in mind?
Once you’ve unlocked smuggling, you can start researching the next nodes in the tech tree: drug trafficking, human trafficking, international weapons trade etc. I’m pretty sure OP is heading for the Lord of War achievement.
I did that once, when the Nexus phones weren't available in Switzerland but they were in Germany. I ordered it to a location close to the border that specifically offers a postal address as a service and went to pick it up.
The correct thing to do would have been to go to the border agents, get a confirmation that I'm bringing the merchandise out of the country and pay the Swiss VAT. With the confirmation I could theoretically get the VAT back from the seller I paid it to. Except that was Google and they weren't intending to sell it for export, so I doubt they would have helped with that.
What I did was unpack the phone, throw away the packaging, put my old phone in one jeans pocket and my new one in the other, and drive back over the boarder. Having two phones isn't that weird, so I thought I could get away with claiming them as personal items if I was asked. But I wasn't even stopped (they only do sampling at the crossing) so it was easy. But it was technically smuggling. Anything over 300 CHF needs to be declared and VAT paid, the phone was around 400 €.
My mom once went clothes shopping to Austria and didn't declare them. The border guard asked what she bought. She claimed clothes, but not over the limit. He was like no way, I know that brand, they must be worth more, checked the stuff, and discovered it was worth too much. She had to pay VAT plus a pretty decent fine.
I only crossed the US Canadian border once in each direction, but to me it seemed like they were way more strict and thorough than here in Europe within Schengen. So I'd be scared I think. But overall I still think your plan could work if you're careful with it. Maybe gaming laptop would be suspicious if you went for a one day trip, would be better if it was longer. But a phone not really.
If you buy the phone to use it ourself, doesn't that mean that it is a personal item?
Ah, yes it's for personal use, true. But the meaning of personal item as it relates to customs means an item that you take with you on the travels for your own use, so the assumption is that it leaves and re-enters your country with you. So that there is no net export or import involved. Here's the definition my government provides (helpfully even available in English).
My claim, if asked, would have been, that I always use two phones and I just took both with me when I went to Germany and then obviously took both back to Switzerland.
I have technically smuggled cheese and champagne into Canada with the help of a border guard.
I studied there for a few years and usually came back to France for Christmas or summer and always brought some cheese and wine with me when going back to Canada. I declared them the first time, but after waiting 2 hours just to have a guy take a bewildered look at my 1kg piece of brie, 1kg of comté and 2 bottles of wine and ask "how much is that worth?" (To which the answer was like 150€ at most) I stopped declaring them.
Once I was waiting for a friend at the airport and there was some border guard dude patrolling with a dog and I guess I stared at them too long wondering if the dog was trained to sniff non pasteurized french cheese, so the guy started questioning me. I didn't lie and he was understanding because I was obviously not going to prop up some cheese smuggling crime syndicate with these quantities, so he just let me go and told me I should have declared the items.
It's been years since I've crossed the Canada/USA border, so things may be different today. But when I went, the Canada side was more concerned about smuggled weapons, while the USA side was more concerned about smuggled drugs. Still, it doesn't take much to trigger a border patrol search.
Apparently if you go from New Brunswick in the morning, spend the day driving through Maine/New Hampshire/Vermont, and cross into Quebec the next day, that's suspicious enough to get detained for several hours and to have your entire car searched at the border. To me it just made sense to do a straight line drive through those states, since staying inside Canada between those two points would have been a much longer, more convoluted route. Silly me, being logical about my route without considering how others break international law.
People in border towns are always on alert for people walking remote roads, hitchhikers, etc. The border strip itself is cleared and monitored with remote cameras, drones, patrols on horseback and ATVs, etc.
My wife and I were bored and it was raining in northern NH so we decided to explore the far north end of NH. Then we decided "Since we are this close to the border lets go to Canada." We told the border officer that we were going for the day for lunch and he paused for a sec then waved us through. lol We ended up eating in a Greek restaurant and found out they still smoked in restaurants in Quebec.
view more: next ›