Are You Doing Enough to Protect Your Business from Trade Compliance Risks?

Machine Automated Transcript: Rachel Winkler works for Nixon Peabody in DC, and so she’s an attorney with that firm, and obviously in the trade industry. But go ahead, Rachel, just go ahead and let us know a little bit more about who you are and what you guys do there and all that kind of good stuff.

Yeah. So I’m a partner with Nixon Peabody. We’re an amla 100 law firm with offices around the country in the world. I am on our cross border risks team. It’s a really unique team that not a lot of other practices have. We fall in our government investigations and white collar section, but we are comprised of former DHS officials. So my other partners on my team are former acting ICE Director, former acting general counsel, former H at Homeland Security investigation special agents in charge. So we really kind of span the gamut of Homeland Security. I my personal background. I was at DHS for seven years, focusing on immigration policy, also working in headquarters on benefits, enforcement, border security and trade issues in private practice. You know, I’ve expanded my expertise, even more so in the homeland security space. And really, folks come to us when they have when they need somebody to fix a problem, right? So, well,

that’s, that’s the one thing with most attorneys, is that when people are calling for an attorney at that point, there is an issue, usually, and somebody’s got to be the proverbial pooper scooper at the end of a parade to clean it all up, right? And that’s like, there you go.

Don’t get me wrong. I love all of our compliance minded clients. I appreciate companies doing the right setup from the start, way cheaper for forum. They don’t have to call me as much, but we are also, you know, we also get brought in to do as you say, to kind of fix issues that have gone awry, help people navigate really difficult circumstances.

So the ultimate responsibility that, as they’re, you know, you’ve got foreign nationals in your company and things of that nature, where would DHS generally look at to say, here is where the buck

company and things of that nature, where would DHS generally look at to say, here is where the buck

stops. I mean, yeah, we can always say the CEO of the company, but I mean, in general, of a big company and one, where does DHS would they, you know, say, Okay, we’re holding you accountable. Or you should have had some policies in that.

Yeah. I mean, look, they’re going to go after the company generally, and it could impact your ability to continue sponsoring foreign nationals. It could impact your ability to participate in various trade programs or licensing programs, and it could impact your and then they could, you know, they could, ultimately, depending upon what types of issues they’re looking into, they could find people in your management supply chain responsible particularly for depending on, you know, depending on what the issue is. They could find them responsible for fraudulent activity, for I nine violations for if they’re here and they’re not here on the right types of visas, for, you know, unlawful work authorization, if you’re sharing information that you shouldn’t be sharing with that foreign national, right, you’re looking at potential criminal consequences, and those could apply to Sure, it could apply to the top. But sometimes the top has a really good paper trail that, you know, they weren’t paying attention, even though they were supposed to, but you have a manager who has been trained on these issues, but hasn’t been carefully watching what’s going on in the company, that manager could be liable for those, you know, For those violations. And you know, generally speaking, we see criminal you know, we don’t see, you know, criminal allegations being made absent, you know, pretty serious misconduct. So, so you know this isn’t, you know, we’re it’s very unlikely this is just a mistake, right? Um, mistakes are, are understandable, and generally, you’ll be subject to some type of civil violation, you know, maybe a fine, you know, a hand slap, maybe you have to deregister or whatever for a couple years. Criminal violations tend to rise to a higher level and require some type of knowledge, some type of you know, you know, actively, actively, you know, closing your eyes, right?

Is there an effort from the Chinese companies that are either trying to circumvent certain things, to get their hands on us? Technology? And or is, Are there efforts that Chinese companies are working on behalf of the Chinese government to do and conduct espionage type activities?

I think what the government is seeing is, you know, companies actively engaging in or what they believe is happening is companies actively engaging in fraudulent activity to hide the source of their of their goods in the supply chain, and to hide that forced labor.

So in looking at that, let me ask then, from what you’re dealing with, I guess, with your clients and all the the end result, what activities do you who recommend that leadership should take to prevent themselves their companies from get going awry? What should they be meeting with certain departments? Should they be asking certain questions? And if so, you know, to who? What? What? What do you want them to do to show due diligence, versus something that would be in late, you know, earlier on, could be considered negligence or gross negligence. Because

you’re a small shop doesn’t mean you know these, these issues don’t apply to you, um, if you are looking, you know, if some if a price seems too good to be true. There’s probably a reason for it, and and you should be looking at what you know, what the company is that you are, you are sourcing your product from you.