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After half a century immersed in the world of trade, customs broker Amy Magnus thought she’d seen it all, overcoming regulations and all kinds of logistical hurdles to import everything from lumber and bananas to circus animals and Egyptian mummies.
Then came 2025.
Tariffs were imposed in a way he had never seen. The new rules left him wondering what they really meant. Federal workers, always a reliable backstop, became more elusive.
“2025 has changed the trading system,” says Magnus. “It wasn’t perfect before, but it was a working system. Now, it’s much more chaotic and frustrating.”
Once a hidden cog in the international trade machine, customs brokers are getting a rare spotlight as President donald trump Reestablishes America’s commercial relations with the world. If this breathless year of tariffs is like a trade war, customs brokers are its front line.
Some? Americans As a customs broker, every ups and downs of trade policy are highlighted in detail. He was there in the early days of Trump’s second term, when the tariffs were announced Canada and Mexico, and two days later, when the same tariffs were halted. They were there under every regulation on imports of steel and seafood, cars and copper, polysilicon and pharmaceuticals, etc. For every tariff, for every cut-out, for every order, brokers have been left to translate policy into reality, line by line and code by code, in a year when it seemed like every passing week brought change.
“We were accustomed for decades to a certain way of processing, and from January to now, that universe has been turned upside down for us,” says Al Raffa, a customs broker in Elizabeth, New Jersey, who helps shepherd container loads of cargo to the U.S., filled with everything from rounds of Brie to boxes of chocolates.
Each arrival of imported products into the country requires filing with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and, often, other agencies. Importers often turn to brokers to handle regulatory tasks and with new trade regulations implemented by the Trump administration, they have seen their demand grow along with their workload.
Many shipments that would now enter duty free are subject to duty. Other imports that had minimal duties and might have cost the company a few hundred dollars saw bills rise into the thousands. For Rafa and his crew, the ever-expanding list of tariffs means that any given product can be taxed under several different tariff lines.
“That one line of cheese items that used to be just one tariff, now it can be two, three, in some cases five tariff numbers,” says Rafa, 53, who has been working in the trade since he was a teenager and who has a button labeled “Make Trade Boring Again.”
government regulation There has always been a reality for brokers, and this is the reason for their existence. However, when broad trade rules changed in the past, they were typically issued well in advance of their effective dates, with periods for comment and review, with every wording of the policy drafted in an effort to offer clarity and definition.
With Trump, news of a major change in trade rules might come in a Truth Social post or a large chart held by the president in the Rose Garden.
“It would be a big mistake not to look at you white House “Visit the website on a daily basis, multiple times a day, just to see what executive order is going to be announced,” Raffa says.
Each announcement sends brokerage firms scrambling to analyze the rules, update their systems to reflect them, and alert their clients who may have shipments on their way and for whom any change in tariffs could mean a big blow to their bottom line.
JD Gonzalez, a third-generation customs broker in Laredo, Texas, and president of the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America, says the volume and pace of the changes have been daunting. But the wording of White House orders often leaves more questions unanswered than brokers.
“Sometimes the order is vague, the guidance that’s provided is sometimes vague, and we’re trying to make a determination,” says Gonzalez, 62.
Gonzalez announced a 10-digit tariff code for liquor and doors and recounted the complex web of rules that set duties on a chair with a frame made of steel produced in the U.S. but processed in Mexico. He says that as brokers’ jobs have become harder, some of his companies have begun charging clients more for their services because it takes more time to track each item they are responsible for on a bill of lading.
“You double the time,” he says.
Wherever brokers go, they cannot live without seeing the imprint of their work. Gonzalez looks at a T-shirt tag and wonders what a pimp did to get it into the country. Magnus sees Belgian chocolate or Chinese silk and is amazed that, despite all the things that could have prevented something from landing on a store shelf, it still arrived. Rafa wanders through the supermarket, picks up a can of artichoke hearts, and considers every possible regulation that might be in place to secure its importation into the country.
It’s heartening for brokers who used to exist in a gray area of hidden bureaucracy unseen by most Americans to now be getting a little more recognition.
“It was probably assumed that’s how that wonderful piece of delicious cheese came to be on the shelf, or in that Gucci bag,” says Raffa. “Up until this year, people had no idea what I did.”
Magnus, who is 70 and lives on Marco Island, Florida, spent 18 years at U.S. Customs before starting her brokerage in 1992. They found comfort in the precision of the rules governing every import, from crude oil to diamonds.
“We don’t like to leave any doubt, we don’t like to leave anything up to interpretation,” she says. “When we’re struggling ourselves, trying to interpret some of these things and understand their meaning, it’s a very unsettling place to be.”
It’s not just White House orders that have complicated their job.
Cost-cutting at the Department of Government Efficiency under billionaire Elon Musk has led to layoffs and retirements of trusted government employees, to whom brokers turn for guidance. The shutdown slowed operations at ports. And some federal employees remain cautious about decoding trade orders for fear of falling out of sync with the administration, making it sometimes difficult to provide answers on their interpretation of tariff rules.
Magnus was shocked by such steps that seemed contrary to everything she knew about trade policy. Canada as a rival? Switzerland imposed 39% tariff? It contradicted how she came to see Cargo’s choreography and what it says about the world.
“Doing business with all these countries around the world is like an incredible ballet,” she says. “In my mind, I always felt that as long as we were trading and we were friendly with each other, we were reducing the chances of war and killing each other.”
Work has been so busy this year that Magnus has not been able to take time off. Tariffs being implemented or removed from Friday afternoon orders have been announced so frequently over the weekend that it has become an inside joke with coworkers.
“It’s Friday afternoon,” she says. “Is everyone watching?”
Hours after Magnus repeated this, the White House’s next order was posted, removing many of the tariffs on agricultural products and sending brokers into another panic.
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Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky