Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald told Newsmax on Tuesday that the Justice Department's $1 billion trade fraud milestone is only "a baseline," signaling a broader federal push against importers who dodge U.S. duties by mislabeling goods, faking origins, or routing cargo through third countries.

McDonald, who heads the task force, spoke on "Rob Schmitt Tonight" hours after the Trade Fraud Task Force announced it had surpassed $1 billion in civil and criminal recoveries, penalties, forfeitures, and publicly charged losses in less than a year.

The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security launched the task force in August 2025, and it now sits alongside a new Global Trade and Commerce Enforcement Section within DOJ's National Fraud Enforcement Division.

"The announcement today really demonstrated our entrance into this new frontier of fraud, which is customs and trade fraud," McDonald said.

He said that "the American worker and the public fisc [national treasury] loses hundreds of billions of dollars a year by international actors who exploit the American economy and flood our markets with different products and fail to pay the necessary duties that the laws passed by Congress require of them."

The scale of the problem tracks with private estimates.

A Goldman Sachs analysis last year found tariff evasion could eventually affect more than $200 billion in U.S. imports and cut tariff revenue by roughly $40 billion over the long term through undervaluation, false country-of-origin declarations, and transshipment.

McDonald framed the effort as a defense of domestic industry.

He said the department is "looking to ensure that the American worker is protected and that American companies can survive and thrive in the international market, and that we bring these bad actors internationally to justice."

He described customs and trade fraud as an addition to, not a substitute for, the division's other work.

The billion-dollar figure is heavily weighted by a single case.

About $549.5 million came from a May settlement with Perfectus Aluminum and affiliates over Chinese aluminum extrusions disguised as pallets to evade antidumping and countervailing duties. Only about $150 million of the total is tied to pending cases.

Two Chicago gold jewelry indictments pushed the tally past $1 billion.

Prosecutors charged Raj and Veena Kohli, operators of Surya International, with falsely declaring 563 jewelry entries as Singaporean when they originated in India and the United Arab Emirates, thereby avoiding more than $38 million in duties on shipments valued at about $693 million.

In a separate case, Naperville wholesaler Narain Gulabani is charged with dodging $13.6 million in duties on roughly $240 million in imports.

The task force pairs DOJ's civil and criminal divisions with Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection, allowing parallel duty collection, False Claims Act suits, and criminal charges from the same conduct.

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