The nearest thing to the old free-trade port that exists in the United States today is the foreign-trade zone. It is a sort of No Man’s Land which has been described as “a neutral stockaded area where a shipper may put down his load, catch his breath, and decide what to do next.”
There are four of these zones in the United States, located at New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Seattle. They are fenced and guarded areas into which importers may bring merchandise without payment of duties—excepting prohibited merchandise such as narcotics, subversive or immoral literature, or lottery matter. The merchandise may remain in the zone indefinitely, and once it is there it may be manipulated, processed or manufactured without being subject to any Federal or state controls.
The foreign-trade zones are used for many operations such as assembling machinery, dyeing and bleaching materials, bottling, weaving, printing, extracting oils and other components from raw materials, and for cleaning, grading, sorting, and repackaging materials for a specific market.
It is only when the finished product is removed from the zone that it becomes subject to commodity quotas, commodity standards, labelling and marketing requirements, licenses, fees, controls and taxes that normally apply to all imports. However, if it is to his advantage, the importer may ask for an earlier determination of the duties and taxes due—before the processing changes the classification of the goods involved.
The foreign-trade zones are intriguing areas because although they are physically within the United States, for all practical commercial purposes they remain outside the United States—reminders of an earlier day when trade through many ports of the world was unfettered.
22
THE RESTLESS AMERICAN
Inspector Leonard Simon, a tall man with faint crinkles about his eyes, stood at his post in the Customs baggage examination area late one August afternoon at New York’s Idlewild International Airport. He was waiting for the rush of travellers who then were disembarking from a huge Pan American Boeing 707 jet which had just completed its swift flight from Paris.
Simon had arrived on the job early that morning and this was one of the few times he had been able to relax. Tourists returning from Europe had been pouring through the airport in droves. And before the day was ended, he and his fellow inspectors would have examined the documents and the luggage of passengers disgorged from more than 100 airliners—a restless army arriving from all parts of the world.
At the peak of the traffic, as many as 1,000 persons moved through the inspection lanes each hour. Fifteen years earlier—in the postwar years—only a handful of officers was needed to handle the international air traffic. The jet age had changed all this. A force of 248 men was now required, and each year travel by air was increasing.
They came in waves from the planes, laden with boxes, bundles, bags and cases—impatient to clear this last official hurdle which stood between them and their destination. There was a certain air of resentment about some of them when they entered the inspection lanes, as though they were being forced to undergo an unpleasant inoculation which was entirely unnecessary. Some showed their nervousness with self-conscious titters. Some were openly hostile to the inspectors. And some viewed the routine with bored resignation.