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Telling people where they can't acquire raw materials for their products seems over the line to me.

When they start telling companies to stop outsourcing their helpdesk and IT work to India and Costa Rica and every other third world they can find to work for a bag of rice, then they can hassle Gibson.



The pertinent ammendment of the Lacey Act that Gibson is mired in was proposed and supported by the United States Wood industry, to force American companies to buy American wood. Their argument was that it kept cheap wood out of the U.S. and protected American jobs, which it did for a lot of things like pulp wood etc. The wood industry didn’t take into account the big picture and the untoward effect it was going to have on companies that imported woods for making furniture and musical instruments. That is where the problems came up because they lobbied for a law that benefitted most of the wood industry but forgot about the possible impact on certain specialty wood businesses.

According to some of the information that has leaked about the case against Gibson, one of Gibson’s buyers sent emails that got picked up by the feds that indicated a recommendation to procure wood by means of the gray market. Specifically, Gibson recognized that even their legal sources were potentially compromised by corrupt foreign officials working with smugglers to enrich themselves and pretty much said, “why not go with the flow?” and since they are all crooks, go with the crooks with the cheapest price. Supposedly some of this gray market sourcing information got into the hands of the feds because there was so much infighting between the crooks smuggling the wood that one group of smugglers decided to take out the competition by turning in their competitors. No honor among thieves.

Gibson has now been put in the uncomfortable position of denying that their employee recommended a gray market purchase and rather than deny that he made the statement, they have had to argue that the statement is being taken out of context.

Keith
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