{"id":97906,"date":"2018-01-26T07:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T22:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/?p=97906"},"modified":"2019-03-13T01:03:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T08:03:17","slug":"20180126-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20180126-01\/?p=97906","title":{"rendered":"The saga of Heartland vs. The United States Beet Sugar Association"},"content":{"rendered":"

I first learned about tariff engineering<\/a> in the case of Heartland By-Products v. The United States<\/i>. Heartland avoided the 6% tariff on “refined sugar product with 6% or less additional content (not counting foreign substances)” by adding molasses to the sugar, thereby taking it above the 6% threshold, importing the mixture tariff-free, and then re-refining the product after importation to extract the molasses and produce refined sugar again. They would then ship the molasses back to Canada, where they would add the molasses to another batch of sugar, and the cycle would repeat. <\/p>\n

The entire operation hinged on whether molasses is a “foreign substance”. If it is a foreign substance, then adding it to the sugar does not count toward the 6%, and the scheme falls apart. This case took a long time to resolve. I found a case in 1999 which joined the story already in progress<\/a>, and it even explains some of the mechanics by which the molasses is refined out of the mixture. Here’s the timeline: <\/p>\n