Counterfeits go directly to consumers – they skip ports
Hanna Veltheim, 2022 -A former news and current affairs editor with a degree in Journalism “Counterfeiting: A Growing Threat to the Future of Global Trade” Futures Platform, 9/28, https://www.futuresplatform.com/blog/counterfeits-future-of-global-trade-threat //DH
As e-commerce trends skew heavily to direct-to-consumer sales, counterfeit consumer goods are no longer arriving at ports in shipping containers for customs agents to inspect, as they have done for hundreds of years. Instead, they’re being hand-delivered, one or two items at a time, by local postal services, evading a system that cannot scale up staff numbers to inspect every parcel. And for large-scale shipping of counterfeit items, forgers take advantage of free-trade zones, effectively laundering money through cargo.
The rapid growth of the secondhand market and online peer-to-peer platforms is another significant contributor to the increase in counterfeiting. It can be difficult to detect the authenticity of products from photos or seek refunds on peer-to-peer platforms; and while major resale platforms forbid the selling of counterfeit products, it’s a challenging rule to enforce.