The thing that’s most troubling about the Lacey Act is that it doesn’t require an actual complaint from the offended country for U.S. officials to investigate. In fact, it doesn’t even matter if the country whose laws you’re alleged to have broken actually believes you broke its laws. So in order to comply with the Act, you not only have to know all of the laws of the country from whom you’re importing, you also need to be able to anticipate how the various U.S. federal agencies who might claim jurisdiction over your imports might interpret any given law of any of those countries.
Indeed, in all three cases mentioned the video, the three countries in question—India, Madagascar, and Honduras—all found that the party targeted by the U.S. government hadn’t actually broken any of the country’s laws. In fact, the attorney general of Honduras filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit of on behalf of the lobster guys, stating that they hadn’t violated any Honduran law. It didn’t matter. The court ruled that the U.S. government officials know the laws of Honduras better than the Honduran government.
Mao wrote:Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party
