Handbags, drugs and slave labor (equals about 750,000 American jobs lost)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.sundaypaper.com/More/Archives/tabid/98/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3494/Handbags-drugs-and-slave-labor-.aspx

Why you should care where your gift came from

By Josh Clark

A Pakistani gets four and a half years for reselling Virgin Mobile phones in Houston for more than he paid for them. A Vietnamese man in Virginia is convicted of mislabeling catfish as sole filets in order to sell them at a higher price. Two New Yorkers are pinched for selling counterfeit Colgate toothpaste.

These are the minutiae to be found in the Intellectual Property Rights press releases of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Web site.

In addition to its more visible duties of snagging drug mules attempting to enter the U.S. and taking down illegal immigrants running like hell through the desert, ICE is charged with protecting American citizens from counterfeit goods. Unfortunately, customs officials only managed to snag about $200 million worth of such goods in 2007, about one-hundredth of the revenue counterfeiters made in the U.S. that year. As it turns out, the law-enforcement aspect of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection ICE is responsible for looks like a losing battle.

Worldwide, the counterfeit goods trade—which doesn’t, by the way, include counterfeit money—eclipses the global drug trade. The U.N. estimates drugs pulled down about $322 billion in 2006; the World Customs Organization says counterfeit goods took in about $600 billion. The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC), a group of brand-owning companies, says annual global trade in fake goods rose from $5.5 billion in 1982 to approximately $600 billion in 2007. Just how accurate those estimates are is up for debate, however.

Atlanta got its own headline in mid-December, after ICE raided four safe houses and confiscated 13,000 pieces of counterfeit luxury goods, totaling, according to ICE, about $250,000 in knock-off items that will never flood the Apparel Mart in a suspiciously low-priced one-day sale. Among the labels abused by the counterfeiters were Nike, for shoes, and Gucci and Coach for handbags. ICE’s additional seizures included a 2005 Chevy van and truck.

Barbara Gonzalez, regional spokesperson for ICE, says she can’t comment on the case; the investigation is ongoing, since ICE hasn’t made an arrest yet. She can, however, give some statistics.

“First and foremost, it costs American industry and trade about $200 billion to $250 billion each year,” she tells The Sunday Paper. “That’s a lot of money. And it equals about 750,000 American jobs lost.”

FULL story at link.

[geckosfeet]

1. $250b a year - heck - get yourself a TARP bailout and make that in a day.