CALETariff engineering for trade counsel and importers
The rate you pay is the result of decisions. Most of them are still open.
CALE models the tariff schedule as formal logic and searches the lawful configurations of a product for the lowest rate the rules will support. Every finding arrives with the derivation that makes it lawful.
Request an engagement1. The regime
Importers are paying rates that no one can fully explain.
- 1. Duty is no longer additive. Measures interact — some stack, some supersede, some are mutually exclusive. A calculator that sums them is wrong.
- 2. Authorities now expire. Section 122 lapsed on July 24 and was replaced the same morning. A rate that was correct in June is not correct today.
- 3. The code you inherited is not the only lawful one. Most products were classified once, years ago, against one reading of the notes — with no search for the alternatives the schedule permits.
- 4. A model that cannot show its derivation cannot support reasonable care.
Our method
We treat a tariff bill as the output of rules, not a fixed cost. CALE models the tariff schedule as formal logic and searches every lawful path to a lower rate. A finding is either proven or it is not shown.
See how it works ↓2. The engine
If you want to understand what we do and how it works, read this.
The problem? Most savings are still found by hand.
We spent years building an engine that treats a tariff bill as a math problem instead of a fact of life. Most tools in this space are calculators. You describe a product, they tell you what you owe, and that is the end of it. CALE starts where the calculator stops. It holds the tariff schedule, its section notes, and the rulings that interpret them as formal logic, and then it searches. It asks what would happen if the housing were aluminum instead of steel, if final assembly moved one border over, if the product entered under a different heading, if the valuation were structured another way, and it checks every one of those paths against the actual rules. Across the products we have run so far, [RESULT], and in one engagement [CASE].
The part we care most about is that none of this is a black box. The engine does not guess and it does not estimate. It solves, using satisfiability methods, the same mathematics used to verify aircraft software and microchips. Every finding arrives with its derivation attached, a chain of steps that ends at the specific rule, note, or ruling that makes it lawful. If a saving cannot be proven from the rules, it is not shown. That standard is what makes the work usable by counsel, because a recommendation you cannot trace is a recommendation you cannot defend in front of CBP. We wrote the method up in [PAPER], and the short version of it is this: duty is written in rules, and rules can be solved.
3. Engagements
We run the engine. You receive the findings.
Every engagement is run by hand and reviewed line by line before anything reaches you.
Duty engineering
Material, assembly, origin, and valuation, searched for the lawful configuration that carries the lowest rate. Each change comes with its legal basis.
Refund exposure
Duties paid under authorities that no longer stand, identified and quantified for recovery while the window is open.
Classification review
Every HTS code in your book, checked against the notes and rulings that govern it. Misclassification found before CBP finds it.
4. Working with us
You send the SKUs. We return the proof.
Send a product list with materials, costs, and origins. We run the engine, review every finding, and deliver a memo your counsel can defend. No software to install. Nothing to integrate.
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