Lock the White House Watch Newsletter for free
Your Guide to What Trump’s Second Season Means Washington, Business and World
The author is the author of “Gomora” and “Zero Zero Zero”. For more than 20 years, he has lived under police protection due to the threat he received from the Naples Mafia.
Mafia leaders know that all economic decisions that bring higher prices open up smuggling markets where thriving. The so-called “mutual tariffs” ordered by US President Donald Trump in April will turn into even more smuggling. Mexican cartels, Italian criminal organizations, the Russian mafia, and other groups that can already traffic illegal items to the US, have become easy to smuggle legal things. An immeasurable new market that could potentially rival bootlegging in the banned era has appeared in organized crime stands ready to capitalize.
Our history shows what happens. It takes away the 1807 embargo law, in which Thomas Jefferson imposed a complete embargo on foreign trade to put pressure on Britain and France. This has resulted in a significant increase in smuggling, particularly in border areas such as Vermont and Maine. When the Smoot-Hawley Customs Act of 1930 increased tariffs on more than 20,000 imported products, Italian-American mafia organizations began to form themselves as intermediaries as many small traders turned into illegal routes to maintain profit margins.
All tariffs create appetite in the market where crime intervenes to satisfy. When prices hit everything from gaming consoles to French wine and textiles already at the heart of the smuggling business, Trump’s tariffs create more opportunities.
And when smuggling routes multiply, we know how products move. For example, we are already used to illegal fuel transport through the Mexican cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación. In Utah in April, American families were indicted for partnering with Mexican criminal organizations to smuggle nearly 2,900 transports of stolen crude oil into the United States. In 2024, the US company pleaded guilty to avoid dumping and reverse obligations by smuggling porcelain tiles from China and forgerying its origins as “made in Malaysia.”
Before Trump’s tariffs, the smuggling market was about counterfeit products in Asia. US Customs and Border Patrol Data shows $2.8 billion in counterfeit attacks in 2023 and $5.4 billion in 2024. Most of the products come from China and Hong Kong, accounting for around 90% of the total amount seized in 2024 for intellectual property infringement. These routes are also used for legal and mandatory goods.
Increased control on ports is one solution, but this means customs will slow down. Criminal organisations choose ports based on speed, not the level of corruption. The faster the port, the more items you can bring in without control. The ports in Savannah, Georgia in Houston, Texas and the ports in Long Beach, California are apparently targeted by smugglers. If they gain more control, they slow the efficiency of freight transport.
And labeling is no longer sufficient to prove that clothing production takes place in a particular country. China, which already manages around 40 ports in Latin America, is likely to use them to bring Chinese products to the US, where it appears to be producing South America.
Is it possible that Trump really doesn’t know that tariffs are a great opportunity for smugglers? It may not be bothered him as he knows that American companies need products at pre-term prices to stay competitive. Smuggling could provide him with a reason to maintain political pressure on foreign governments. Tariffs are his political move, but smuggling provides illegal fixes.
This is not the first thing Trump is exposed to such a mindset. His leader in the 1970s, Roycone represented mafia bosses such as Carmine Garante, Carlo Gambino and Nicholas “Cockinik” Lattenni, and advised the Genovese crime family. Kohn knew there were legal and illegal ways to get things done. Criminal organisations have laws that companies follow, and then there are “rules.” Standard steps to make a profit. Trump’s formal tariffs are law. Meanwhile, the informal black market follows the rules.
Smuggling becomes systematic. It’s not a strategy to get cheap or counterfeit products, but a necessary way to stay competitive. And criminal organizations understand that the more contraband the market demands, the more difficult it becomes for customs to fight. Eventually, smuggling in America once again reaches an acceptable balance.
