Gibson Guitar Raid: The Lacey Act Runs Amok

The Gibson Guitar saga is bar none the strangest and most intriguing tangle of events I have followed in my 26 years covering the woodworking industry. The image of gun-toting federal marshals swooping down on a wood products plant, especially one of Gibson’s renown, is surreal to say the least.

And the story is still unfolding.

On Wednesday, September 21, Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is scheduled to meet with federal officials to discuss the November 2009 and August 24 raids of Gibson's manufacturing plants in Memphis and Nashville.

Also in the next week or so, officials of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service are to meet with members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which recently demanded to be briefed about the Gibson investigation.

Authorities of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which received court-ordered search warrants for both of the surprise law-enforcement actions, alleged that Gibson violated the Lacey Act in each case. In 2009, federal authorities seized ebony wood, parts and guitars that they suspect were illegally harvested in Madagascar's rainforest. In last month’s raid, Gibson allegedly was in possession of Indian rosewood that had been mislabeled with incorrect tariff codes. The feds say the confiscated wood did not comply with India’s laws requiring that wood be subjected to a certain level of value-added processing before it could be exported.

Juszkiewizc has made numerous public appearances and interviews declaring Gibson's innocence and demanding that the investigations be dropped and his company's property be returned. While I can’t say whether or not Gibson did wrong in either or both cases, it is important to note that while the government is holding wood, components, products and computer hard drives valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars, no charges have yet to be filed in either case.

The Lacey Act and Unintended Consequences
In November 2007 I wrote a column on the Combat Illegal Logging Act sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). The measure amended the century-old Lacey Act, which banned the importation of endangered plants and animals to include wood. Widen introduced the bill as a response to a study that indicated Oregon’s plywood and flooring industries were being decimated by lower-priced Chinese imports, much of which was suspected to come from illegally harvested sources.

Shortly before his illegal logging bill passed as part of a massive Farms Appropriation Bill, Wyden, said, ““Illegal logging has been giving timber and timber product exports from countries including China an unfair advantage over U.S. companies that are following the rules. This bill will help level the playing field for American manufacturers, protect the jobs of the workers they employ and address an illegal logging crisis.”