Here is what I said at today's CPAC hearing. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, I had to provide my comments via phone, and will not be able to produce a good summary of the meeting.
CPAC has an important role to ensure that congressionally
mandated limitations on executive authority are honored.
Here, even
assuming that all the criteria for import restrictions are met, CPAC must still
ensure that the designated list only encompasses coins and other artifacts that
were “first discovered within” and “subject to export control” by Cambodia,
North Macedonia or Uzbekistan.
In other
words, there needs to be documentary proof coins now sold on legitimate markets
in places like Europe can only be found in Cambodia, North Macedon or
Uzbekistan before they can lawfully be placed on the designated list.
Such an
assumption is impossible to make here. The
vast majority of coins that circulated in Cambodia, North Macedonia or Uzbekistan
were made elsewhere and circulated either regionally or internationally as
items of commerce. The number of these
coins found in these countries is an insignificant percentage of the totals found
elsewhere.
This is
particularly true for coins like Alexander the Great tetradrachms and Roman
Republican and Roman Imperial coins. Indeed,
the State Department approved a speech given at a recent numismatic Congress in
Warsaw that made that very same point for Roman Imperial coins.
CPAC must consider three other
points. First, coins are the products of what at the time were
sophisticated industrial practices. Moreover, coins by their nature are “common
or repetitive or essentially alike in material design, color, or other
outstanding characteristics with other objects of the same type.” As such, they cannot be considered
“ethnological” objects.
Second, coins
can only be found by design with metal detectors. Several comments, particularly one by Dr.
Soren Stark, acknowledge that local officials are often well aware of these
activities. That begs the question why regulations
regarding metal detectors such as the institution of a Portable Antiquities
Scheme are not tried as a “self-help” measure and a “less drastic remedy” first
before limiting the ability of Americans to import coins further.
Finally, we
acknowledge and appreciate the Antiquities Coalition’s statement that the CPIA
is meant to only act prospectively to preclude import of artifacts illicitly
exported from a State Party for which restrictions have been granted after the
effective date of any governing regulations.
Unfortunately,
however, Customs doesn’t see it that way and instead applies restrictions as
embargoes on any item on the designated list imported after the effective date
of the restrictions. This is a much
broader construction of its authority that allows source countries to “claw
back” artifacts imported from legitimate markets abroad. This also explains why CPAC’s attention to
these issues is so important. Thank you.
