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Despite the blowback, supporters of the government’s efforts say there are good reasons to enforce the regulations.

“I don’t think [people are] getting the full story,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon). “It’s part of a nice narrative of overregulation if you don’t look at the facts.

“If you are a huge corporation and you’re using volumes of expensive wood, you’d think people would take great care that they would know where it came from,” Blumenauer said, adding: “This is important legislation to protect American jobs, the environment, the countries victimized and our economy.”

The law that Gibson is struggling with was passed in the waning days of the Bush administration in a 2008 amendment to the 111-year-old Lacey Act, which prohibits illegal trafficking in wildlife, fish and plants. The amendment requires that certain plants and plant products be accompanied by an import declaration to ensure they were taken legally from the exporting country.

Some guitar manufacturers say they’ve had no problem complying with the 2008 law.

“It’s complicated, but doable,” said Charlie Redden, supply chain manager for Taylor Guitars, a California-based manufacturer of both acoustic and electric guitars. “It’s something we’ve practiced at Taylor for years. The important part is to start at the beginning and watch it through the supply chain to make sure the laws are being followed in every country, including U.S. Customs.”

Jameson French of the Hardwood Federation, an industry trade association, said the goal of the law was always to use the limited resources of the Justice Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service to go after the most egregious and highest-profile cases of illegal logging. Companies are given flexibility in how they ensure they comply, French said, which keeps them from being buried beneath unnecessary paperwork.

“From a business perspective, that’s a good law, versus a far more regulatory and bureaucratic legislation,” French said.

Under the 2008 legislation, importers are required to list the species and origin of the wood they bring into the country. For manufacturers, compliance may mean verifying the supply chain from their wood distributors, using whatever means necessary to ensure they are not importing illegal products.

At Taylor, that meant company representatives traveled to foreign countries to meet with producers and wood cutters and set up relationships with their suppliers to ensure they are following local laws, Redden said.

Justice and Interior officials said that during the raid, officers carried side arms and wore badges and clothing to identify themselves as agents. But they said no SWAT teams were used in the search, as Juszkiewicz later suggested.

To suggest that officers shouldn’t have executed a search warrant during an investigation of a possible crime is ludicrous, said Andrea Johnson, forest campaign director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nongovernmental organization that probes environmental crimes and launches public campaigns against them.

“It undermines the seriousness of the idea that environmental crimes can be crimes,” Johnson said. “The underlying message is ‘it’s just wood.’ … The reality is illegal logging is a crime.” http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/64563.html in all, I maintain my impression that this is just one more thing Alt.Univ. dug up to put forward his "case" that Obama is the anti-Christ, or somesuch. Gibson didn't do "due diligence"; others did. Gibson's screaming about it, Alt.Univ. grabbed it to try and prove some Obama "conspiracy" and "thug politics". What a waste of time and effort!

Mike's right; they didn't follow the law and now they're screaming about it. Certainly may be a case of government overreach, but from all I read in several articles, the Lacy Law amendment is pretty broadly and poorly written. The amendment was written under Bush...you wanna go after HIM for it being badly written?

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Glenn Hurowitz has a four-part series positing that the public-relations campaign around the Gibson case is more aimed at weakening the Lacey Act than defending an American guitar company. (So far, other manufacturers, such as the C.F. Martin & Co., have avoided trouble.) http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/drop-that-guitar-and-put-
up-your-hands/ with accusations that his company had illegally imported wood from Asia, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz launched a media campaign bashing the federal government’s action and criticizing aspects of the law he had allegedly broken — the Lacey Act, which bans the import of illegally logged forest products.

The reality is that the Lacey Act and other similar measures have enjoyed strong bipartisan support and enthusiastic backing from the American forest products industry. The amendments to the Lacey Act that prohibit the import of illegally logged or traded goods were passed with the strong support of the George W. Bush administration in 2008, with bipartisan Senate co-sponsors in Lamar Alexander (from Gibson’s home state of Tennessee) and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

The reason: American forest products growers, companies, and workers were being asked to compete with foreign operators who employ slave and child labor, and log in national parks and other areas without permission and without paying taxes — even companies that funded Taliban attacks on American soldiers. Competition from illegal imports costs the American forest products industry around $1 billion per year, representing thousands of lost jobs, according to a study by the American Forest & Paper Association.

Mark Barford, executive director of the Memphis-based National Hardwood Lumber Association put it succinctly: “We need the protection of the Lacey Act. We need a fair playing field. Our small, little companies cannot compete with artificially low prices from wood that comes in illegally … This is our Jobs Act.”

The economic benefit of the Lacey Act is why such an unusually wide array of groups support it: the Hardwood Federation (representing more than 13,000 companies across the U.S.), the American Forest & Paper Association, the United Steelworkers (who represent 100,000 pulp and paper workers), Lowe’s Home Improvement, Teamsters International, National Hardwood Lumber Association, International Paper, and hundreds of small and large companies alike, as well as a wide array of environmental groups.

“The [United Steelworkers] has seen true devastation among our members as multiple plants have closed or reduced production, in large part because of imports from nations where illegal logging is a large part of the timber supply,” said Holly Hart, the group’s Legislative Director, told the Chestertown (Ind.) Tribune.

Nonetheless, eager to jump on the latest Tea Party cause and bolstered by Boehner’s speech, some Republicans have been kicking around the idea of repealing or altering the Lacey Act to carve out exemptions for the guitar industry or other users of wood.

But Gibson is an outlier in its own industry. Other major guitar manufacturers have embraced Lacey Act compliance — and have found affordable, legal, sustainable, and super high quality hardwoods for their instruments. Here’s how Bob Taylor, CEO of Taylor Guitars, recently described his company’s approach to Lacey in a blog post for the Forest Legality Alliance:

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It’s very simple. We now investigate the sources of our wood, and we ensure to the best of our ability that the wood was taken legally. We fill out the paper work required and we present our business as an open book. The cost isn’t so much for us. It’s not an unbearable added burden, and we’re happy to do the extra administrative work.

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Taylor continued:

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If I could take any user of wood, whether it be a guitar player or a purchaser of a dining room table, with me on a trip to the forest of 2011 in many, many parts of the world, and let them see with their own eyes the state of the forests and the people living in them, I’d stake my last dollar on the fact that they’d come home and preach with a loud voice how deforestation has got to be stopped. You have to see it to believe it, and if you haven’t seen it with your own eyes, you can’t argue against it. Period. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.

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The comparisons from within its own industry, as well as perhaps some genuine environmental conscience (Gibson has historically provided financial support for conservation efforts) has moved Juszkiewicz to put some space between himself and some of the Tea Party’s extreme calls to repeal or roll back significant parts of the Lacey Act. ”I believe we need government in this area to ensure that wood is used responsibly,” he told Greenwire in an interview.

Nonetheless, Juszkiewicz is scheduled to participate in a Tea Party rally in Nashville next Saturday, Oct. 8, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity and other Tea Party groups. And Gibson recently hired a Washington lobbying firm to explore the possibility of pushing amendments to the law.

However, outside of foreign interests associated with illegal logging, it’s hard to find a major constituency that doesn’t embrace the Lacey Act. In fact, until Gibson’s Tea Party campaign, support for Lacey seemed to be growing along with evidence that it is producing results. The law and similar measures passed in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere have produced a 22 percent decline in illegal logging around the globe. Just this past week, at a ceremony in New York, the Lacey Act was recognized by the United Nations as one of the world’s three most effective forest policies. http://grist.org/business-technology/2011-09-30-guitar-antihero-barkin
g-up-the-wrong-tree/ the quickest "cite" I could find re: Taylor's situation, and while it's a statement by Taylor itself, so can't be proven, I'm not going to put more time into it.

In the same series of articles, it appears that the GOP and Tea Party have grabbed onto this issue to make political hay, so I'm not sure which side should be excoriated more:

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If you’ve tuned into any of the major jobs speeches recently or the conservative media’s political coverage surrounding them, you’ve heard about newly minted Tea Party hero, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. He was sitting in House Speaker John Boehner’s box during President Obama’s jobs speech. Boehner cited him in his own jobs speech a few days later. According to a count by the nonprofit Media Matters, Fox News has featured his company 24 times in the last couple of weeks.

Juszkiewicz’s elevation to conservative celebrity status may seem a little odd: His company is the subject of a civil case brought by the federal government for allegedly importing illegally logged wood. Federal agents recently raided several Gibson Guitar facilities, apparently on suspicion that the illegal imports continue even while the company faces federal action in the original case.

At a time when the GOP has been working overtime to tar the Obama administration for the FBI raid of failed solar panel maker and government loan recipient Solyndra, it raises the obvious question: Why would party leaders associate themselves with a company suspected of committing crimes that not only contribute to horrific environmental destruction and corruption in developing countries — but also put legitimate American timber growers, manufacturers, and workers out of business?

The answers shed light on a disturbing trend among too many in the GOP to unquestioningly adopt Tea Party causes. But this is also a story of how foreign companies are finding a new vehicle to advance their lobbying interests in the United States. Just as Asian timber interests have launched a marketing and lobbying campaign to gain access to American markets for questionably logged wood and paper, Tea Party groups are diverting members’ attention to push these same corporate interests, rather than the broad conservative agenda they signed up for.

On August 24, federal agents knocked on the doors of Gibson Guitar headquarters and factories in Nashville, Tenn., and seized large quantities of imported wood. The company, famous for its Les Paul guitars, had apparently aroused suspicion for importing guitar fingerboards from India under false pretences — claiming the wood was “veneer” when it was allegedly sawn lumber exported in violation of the Lacey Act, a federal law that prohibits trafficking in illegally harvested plants and animals. On further investigation, according to an affidavit in the case, agents found evidence that Gibson had allegedly committed similar offenses 11 previous times.

These were serious accusations, especially because Gibson was already facing a civil action brought by the federal government for allegedly importing illegally logged wood from Madagascar — and had already been raided in that case. Although not all facts in the case are known, a filing by the federal government suggests that Gibson officials knew that the wood they were importing was off limits. The filing quotes a Gibson employee who visited Madagascar in 2008 and reported back in an email:

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The true Ebony species preferred by Gibson Musical Instruments is found only in Madagascar (Diospyros perrieri). This is a slow-growing tree species with very little conservation protection and supplies are considered to be highly threatened in its native environment due to over exploitation … All legal timber and wood exports are PROHIBITED because of wide spread corruption and theft of valuable woods like rosewood and ebony.

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In other words, Gibson officials apparently knew that the wood came from what they called a “grey market,” but, according to the federal suit, they imported it anyway.

What’s worse, the company appears to have continued exporting the ebony even after Madagascar’s 2009 coup, which led to prolonged lawlessness and caused the United States to cut off aid to the country (including conservation aid). In the aftermath of the coup, Chinese logging gangs pillaged Madagascar’s national parks, focusing on high-value export species like ebony. The BBC and other news outlets documented severe abuses by logging operations, including slaughtering endangered wildlife. http://grist.org/politics/2011-09-27-guitar-antihero/]

Apparently Martin and Taylor guitar makers feel differently from Gibson, so it's not just Martin:

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Taylor also had a response to those critics who question the relevance of the Lacey Act for instrument manufacturers: “We’re living through a time of transition from one type of economy to another economy. Many builders view the Lacey Act as flawed and more trouble than it’s worth. We’re at a tricky in-between stage, but the situation will become easier again in the future once we know what the rules are.”

“We should embrace it and go with the flow instead of trying to fight what we can’t change. If it’s good, we should see what we can do to make it better. This is just one more step toward working in a global world with a global mindset. Hopefully we can build some great guitars and do some good along the way.”

Chris Martin also commented on his company’s buying policy with regards to Madagascan rosewood, the purchase of which has caused so many problems for Gibson guitars: “What we heard was the international community has come to the conclusion that the coup created an illegitimate government. That’s when we said, ‘Okay, we can not buy any more of this wood.’

Following a 2009 military coup which saw the overthrow of the environmentally progressive President Marc Ravalomanana, huge quantities of rosewood and ebony were stripped from Madagascar’s rapidly shrinking National Parks.

While Gibson guitars is claiming that they have legal export papers for the rosewood seized under the Lacey Act, there is little doubt that the most of the precious hardwood exported from Madagacar, post-coup, originated from protected areas and hence was illegally logged. http://soundandfair.org/taylor-and-martin-guitars-express-support-for-
the-lacey-act just sloppy due diligence, but it appears to me that they should have known and were using the excuse that they had legal export papers. Given their past actions and the fact that there were 11 instances of them breaking the law previously, I'm not surprised they were raided again. Put together their being championed by the Tea Party and their actions, it seems to me this is a story (which is ALL over the internet) intended to gin up a case against both the Obama administration and the Lacey Act.