Gibson’s prior Madagascar ebony and rosewood issue of the November, 2009 raid is one thing, but this new problem (August 24, 2011 raids on 4 locations) with Indian rosewood and ebony fingerboard blanks is another. It seems that India has regulations banning wood exports of anything over 6mm thickness unless it’s been worked beyond simply “sawn wood” inside their country. But it’s not possible to have India process fingerboard blanks any further into a slotted, shaped, inlaid and bound form, and the Indian Ministry of Trade is O.K. with that since the fingerboards aren’t raw lumber and actually have been worked on as far as reasonable. But the U.S. government is insisting that not going all the way makes the blanks “sawn wood” and thus illegal to export according to Indian law even though Indian authorities are fine with fingerboard blanks! Additionally, there’s been some understandable confusion with appropriate tariff code numbers; and also with having the boards drop-shipped from India to a broker and then a storage facility while being invoiced by LMII, especially since Gibson and not LMII are taking ultimate delivery. It’s bureaucratic harassment and abusive enforcement by agencies with almost total power and less than total understanding of their own regs.
LMII has done everything possible to establish conformance with the law and provide all documents, paper trails, chain of custody evidence, etc. But now they’re justifiably worried that big white trucks and heavily armed agents will show up unannounced at their address, a scenario they might not be able to survive. Even though the U.S. instrument industry accounts for but 1% of wood use here, they seem to be getting disproportionately targeted no matter how much such harassment might endanger the industry’s survival or how many jobs could be lost. It’s all expendable compared to such lofty goals as saving the planet from animal and plant exploiters and rapists!
If these charges hold up, then virtually all Indian ebony and rosewood fingerboard blanks used in the entire industry are illegal, and everyone’s wood inventories and instruments would be liable to seizure and harsh penalties. In fact, the same would apply to all guitar woods over 6mm thick originating in India. So, I’d imagine that all the big dogs are watching this very closely – as goes Gibson, so goes the whole industry. The U.S. government is quickly making it increasingly difficult for small as well as large businesses to survive rampant over-regulation.
(Private message me your email address and will send attachments of the full search warrant affidavit and Gibson’s official press release response.)
What can we do to revise badly written and unworkable regulations, and stop increasingly abusive enforcement? Let upcoming electoral candidates know there’s a very serious problem that’s quickly endangering a lot of domestic businesses and killing formerly healthy small international sales, as well as negatively impacting all musicians who travel out of the country. If this could become a campaign issue which highlights some of the deeply flawed and over-regulated current federal policies and could gain public support, it’s possible to change things.
Much of the problem has nothing at all to do with material from protected plant and animal species, but more to do with bureaucratic and regulatory demands involving non-listed species and costs that are impossibly complicated and unnecessary. In the case of genuine vintage and antique instruments (and many other non-instrument products) current enforcement practices are really nothing more than permission for federal agencies to vandalize and destroy priceless and irreplaceable objects, harass legitimate businesses, musicians, and collectors, and block many traditional exchanges between cultures.
To address a few points which seem to be causing confusion:
1) The issue isn’t at all about “sawed Indian ebony logs with paperwork identified as finger boards”. It’s about fingerboard blanks, and whether or not they can be considered a product involving enough native labor to satisfy the export laws of India. It’s also about a wrong (but closely related) tariff code being entered on only SOME of the paperwork.
2) What’s an acceptable product? As the agent himself pointed out in Gibson’s search warrant affidavit, there’s a distinction between a “fingerboard” (an unfretted wood blank of rough size) and a “fretboard” (which is slotted and contains fret wire). If so, then those are two different products, and as such it’s possible to have a fingerboard blank as distinguished from simply “sawn wood” – adding slots, wires, inlays, shaping and binding would make that blank into a related but different product. In the same way, we offer flat shell blanks, veneers, Abalam® sheets, and strips made to specifications according to what their intended use is: as materials which may or may not be remanufactured/incorporated into other types of finished products such as inlays, guitars, jewelry, furniture, fishing lures, and so on. Similarly, plywood is imported as a product unto itself without it needing to be in another and more final form such as furniture, boxes, or whatever.
To insist, as the U.S. agencies seem to be doing, that materials from India must be in their ultimate retail form is insane, especially in light of the Indian government not interpreting their own regs that way or insisting on such nonsense.
3) Compelling U.S. citizens to obey foreign laws isn’t exactly correct. The Lacey Act assumes that other entities (both foreign and domestic) know best how to manage their respective plant and animal resources, and it attempts to honor those regulations whether they be tribal, regional, state, federal, or foreign. Gibson’s ebony from India is being challenged on the basis of how our agencies interpret the laws of India, regardless of how India herself interprets them.
4) In applying for and accepting most federal permits (such as the USFWS Import/Export Permit), the document specifically states that by signing you have agreed to have authorities examine at any time they wish your premises, paperwork, and inventory. So it’s not an issue of unreasonable search and seizure.
What's confusing is that in the search warrant affidavit Agent Rayfield goes to some length in distinguishing an unslotted "fretboard" from a slotted and fretted "fingerboard" (Para. 13) as found on a finished instrument, and later (para. 22) distinguishes HS 9209.92.00 as "finished parts of musical instruments".
He also mentions (Para. 13) that "importers and exporters have sometimes referred to the sawn pieces of wood intended to be manufactured into fretboards as 'fingerboards' or 'fingerboard blanks'". But he contends that even though these may be informally referred to as "fingerboards" they're actually no more than "sawn wood" and being over 6mm in thickness are "sawn logs" (Para. 19 and 25) and thus a prohibited HS 4407 item (Para. 12).
So at issue is whether or not "fingerboards" exceeding 6mm are "finished parts for musical instruments" as would be allowed under HS 9209.92.00. If not, the argument is that they're "sawn logs" and illegal.
And not too many people know (or want to know) about the leakage, hijacking and general poisonous capacity of the oil industry in Nigeria - they pollute more every single year than in our Gulf of Mexico oil spill. 
