Detecting origin fraud with trade data: the case of U.S. honey imports

Following the 2001 U.S. imposition of antidumping tariffs on imported honey from China and Argentina, industry press noted patterns of trade suggesting that honey was being transshipped to circumvent tariffs, origin fraud that was later uncovered in criminal cases. This article presents three approaches that use trade and production data to flag countries for possible instances of origin fraud and then compares these countries with those implicated in criminal cases and media reports. In our preferred empirical method, we also find that countries with higher corruption scores are more likely to show increases in suspicious trade patterns following the tariffs.