Collectors hoping Trump II would “make collecting great again" have been sorely disappointed. Instead, giveaways in the form of Cultural Property Agreements or Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) to foreign despots, their cultural bureaucracies and US based archaeological advocacy groups that are dependent on foreign excavation permits continue to be approved at an ever increasing pace. These MOUs which impose confiscatory import restrictions on cultural goods are justified as "soft power" measures aimed at encouraging even "failed states" to "like us more." Indeed, the push to complete as many agreements as possible has been so strong that the State Department has gone so far as to fund both foreign requests and "self-help" measures, both of which are supposed to be prerequisites for such agreements. Doge cuts or no, such funding in the form of cultural property implementation grants continue to appear on the State Department Cultural Heritage Center website.
Trump has sought to overturn many "woke" Biden initiatives, but his Administration has nonetheless implemented Biden era decisions to impose import restrictions on behalf of Hindu nationalist India, authoritarian Uzbekistan, and even Hezbollah dominated Lebanon. The Trump Administration may have hit India with 50% reciprocal tariffs and approved Israel's continued bombing campaign in Lebanon, but that hasn't stopped the US government from seizing and repatriating cultural goods to these countries.
Moreover, after a short regulatory pause, the Trump State Department has even expanded these "soft power" efforts. In May 2025, the State Department held a Cultural Property Advisory Committee Meeting (CPAC) to consider a new MOU with Communist Vietnam, and renewed agreements with Chile, Costa Rica, Italy and Morocco. In so doing, the State Department denied a request from groups representing collectors and the trade to postpone the meeting to give time for Trump to appoint at least some CPAC members. As it is, CPAC may be one of the few bodies in the federal government still completely staffed with Biden political appointees.
Now, at a time Congress is out of session and most of Washington, DC is enjoying summer vacation, the State Department has provided public notice of a September 2025 CPAC meeting to consider a renewal of even more controversial "emergency import restrictions" on behalf of Taliban Afghanistan, as well as a new MOU with Cameroon, and renewals for Erdogan's Turkey and Columbia.
The renewal of "emergency import restrictions" on behalf of Taliban Afghanistan should be particularly troubling. Why should the Trump II Administration even consider repatriating cultural goods to the Taliban at all? As was pointed out by representatives of museums, collectors and the trade during a 2021 CPAC hearing to consider the initial request for import restrictions from the "former government of Afghanistan," the Taliban are far more known for dynamiting cultural heritage such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan than preserving it. More recently, a Chinese mining company has moved forward with the blessing of Taliban officials on controversial plans to dig a copper mine under an important ancient Buddhist site at Mes Aynak. Of course, the silence from archaeological advocacy groups that regularly condemn American collectors, dealers and museums as would be looters is deafening. Indeed, the founder of the well-funded and politically connected Antiquities Coalition has gone so far as to praise Communist China's authoritarian, mercantilist, and nationalistic cultural heritage policy. No matter the Chinese Communist's distinct lack of respect for Buddhist cultural heritage in Afghanistan as well as their promotion of Han cultural supremacy along with the state sponsored suppression and destruction of the cultural heritage of subject Tibetan and Uyghur cultures.
Of equal concern is the fundamental question whether the State Department has exceeded its statutory authority to even consider renewing these emergency import restrictions. The notice of the proposed extension does not mention any request for a renewal or information received from the State Party that supports the determination that an emergency condition still exists. 19 U.S.C. Section 2603 (c) (1). Without any such request from a State Party, such restrictions can only be authorized by a special act of Congress as was done for post Saddam Iraq in 2001 and Assad's Syria in 2016.
So, why is the Trump Administration continuing on this same path? It may simply be that the State Department bureaucracy has snookered Administration officials about the true effect of MOUs and import restriction on legitimate trade and collecting. In an email announcing September's CPAC hearing, the State Department claims import restrictions "bar trafficked cultural property from entering the United States while encouraging the legal exchange of cultural property for scientific, cultural and educational purposes."
In fact, such import restrictions actually harm the legal exchange of cultural property because they operate as embargos on all cultural goods of "designated types," including those purchased on legal markets abroad, mostly in Europe. Even worse, once a coin is determined to be of a type that appears on a designated list, it may be detained, seized and repatriated based on nothing more than being one of many thousands of examples of such coins that may have circulated regionally if not internationally.
Coin collectors continue to believe that the governing statute instead requires the government to at least demonstrate "probable cause" that a coin subject to detention, seizure and forfeiture was illicitly excavated after the effective date of any governing regulations, but the State Department and US Customs convinced Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson of the US. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to "green light" such a low threshold before collector's property is taken as a "foreign policy matter." Fast forward some years to the present, and Wilkinson effectively held that illegal aliens who were also allegedly gang members were entitled to more "due process" rights than collectors.
Such import restrictions have been particularly difficult for coin collectors. Overlapping designated lists for multiple countries of coin types subject to such import restrictions now regularly include coins that circulated regionally or even internationally. All this makes it difficult, if not impossible, to import increasing numbers of historic collectors coins from abroad. Most collector's coins simply do not have the provenance documentation necessary for legal import under a current "safe harbor" provision. Given the limited value of most collector's coins and the great numbers found in most collections, its unlikely to have documentation "proving" a particular coin left a specific country before the effective date of governing regulations.
So what can collectors do?
First, collectors should comment on the proposed MOU with Cameroon as well as the proposed renewals of import restrictions for Afghanistan, Columbia and Turkey. While one may think their comments don't matter, silence will be taken as acquiesce to the status quo. Coin collectors should note that coin collecting is tolerated if not encourage in many countries and that embargoes on import of collector's coins makes no sense, particularly because one cannot assume that a coin type was only found in a particular country.
Second, coin collectors should contact their Representative and Senators and ask them to support HR 595, a bill to facilitate the lawful exchange in collector's coins.
Finally, all collectors should advocate for more fundamental legislative reform to protect our due process rights before any collectibles are detained, seized and forfeited to a foreign government. In view of Trump II's continuation of the anti-collecting status quo, only legislative action can help "make collecting great again."
W
