Tariff dodgers stand to profit off U.s.-china dispute

SHANGHAI — Want to avoid U.S. tariffs? In China, a company called Settle Logistics says it knows a way.

Specifically, that way goes through Malaysia — a 4,600-mile diversion compared with sending a shipping container from China straight across the Pacific to the United States. But when those Chinese products arrive at a U.S. port, they will look as if they had come from Malaysia, according to the company, and will be spared tariffs aimed at Chinese goods.

“For those unfair trade barriers targeting our industries from certain countries,” Settle Logistics says on its website, “we can adopt other approaches to bypass those trade tariffs in order to expand markets.”

Such zigzagging routes are called transshipments, and President Donald Trump has used them to justify the trade fight he has picked with a number of countries. They could also take on new relevance should the United States and China carry out their threats to levy a total of more than $200 billion in tariffs against each other.

Trump imposed tariffs last month on steel and aluminum imports almost no matter where they come from, citing transshipments, though he later carved out temporary exemptions for some countries. He argues that China uses transshipments to send much more steel to the United States than trade data suggest and that broad tariffs are needed to stop it.

BRYAN DENTON / THE NEW YORK TIMES A worker boxes up coats in November at a clothing factory in Beijing. The shadowy world of transshipments and other trickery to avoid tariffs is likely to be a major part of any negotiations between China and the U.S. aimed at settling their trade...