WASHINGTON — Ford Motor Co. stated Thursday it might withstand $1.3 billion in penalties in a long-running dispute over import duties paid on Ford Transit Join automobiles.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker stated after the Supreme Court docket declined to listen to its attraction in 2020 that it paid elevated duties for some prior imports, plus curiosity.

U.S. Customs and Border Safety (CBP) is now looking for extra duties of $181 million and is contemplating looking for a financial penalty of “as a lot as $652 million to $1.3 billion,” Ford stated. The automaker added that it might vigorously defend its actions and famous any penalty “can be primarily based on our stage of culpability as decided by the courts.”

CBP ruled in 2013 that Transit Connects imported as passenger wagons and later transformed into cargo vans have been topic to the 25 % obligation relevant to cargo automobiles, reasonably than the two.5 % passenger automobile obligation.

The vans have been assembled in Turkey.

The Justice Division stated Ford “designed, marketed, bought, and delivered the van to customers solely as a two-person cargo van. However to keep away from the upper charge of obligation that applies to cargo vans as in comparison with vans principally designed for passenger transport, petitioner imported every Transit Join … with a brief, low cost rear seat that was designed to be instantly eliminated as quickly because the van cleared” Customs.

The federal government famous the seats lacked head restraints and have been ”upholstered with cost-reduced material that didn’t match that of the entrance seats.”

Ford argued the rear passenger seat met all federal security requirements, had seat belts for each seating place, anchors for the rear seats and seat belts and have been “street-legal passenger automobiles.”

The 25 % tariff stems from a Nineteen Sixties commerce conflict involving frozen hen, and the bigger tariff on cargo automobiles is called the “hen tax.”