> you want to protest it without going to jail you can do so legally by telling people it's a stupid law - while complying with it.

Isn't this what Fedex is doing? Complying with a stupid law but challenging its legality in a court. Not sure where you get the idea that Fedex is breaking the law.

No. According to the article they are claiming that the law (stupid or not) doesn't apply because it would make it hard for them to do business. In other words they are arguing that since they can't comply with the law and keep doing business they should be allowed to violate it. That's different from claiming the law applies but is stupid.

No. Fedex is not saying it can violate the law; it's saying as a private company it should not bear the responsibility to interpret or enforce the law. The ban was originally designed to target a small groups of well identified 'bad guys', such as terrorists and human traffickers. Now Trump administration used it to cover a large number of Chinese companies, most of which may be against US national interest but do not conduct any criminal activities. So the hastily imposed ban made it unclear what is covered and what is not. It's not hard to imagine how confused Fedex is: is it legal to send a Huawei phone? Is it legal to send a document to a lawyer hired by Huawei? What about a personal order by someone works at Huawei?

I don't want to make a moral judgement whether Fedex should win the case, but bringing the case to a court has great legal merits. It can force the administration to clarify the ban, and help many other companies which are as confused as Fedex.

yes, surely packages should go through customs before entering a country? these checks should be performed by govt. not private companies

>surely packages should go through customs before entering a country?

They do. I don't think you realize just how many packages enter the United States on a daily basis though and that Customs only physically inspects a very tiny portion of those packages.

Each year, more than 11 million maritime containers arrive at our seaports. At land borders, another 11 million arrive by truck and 2.7 million by rail. Each of those containers could contain 1 shipment between 1 shipper and 1 importer of record or it could contain dozens or hundreds of individual shipments from multiple shippers to multiple importers of record.

Then you see tens of thousands of packages enter the United States daily via air.

The United States has 328 ports of entry in the country and 13 pre-clearance offices in other countries. In 2018 the United States imported $3.1 trillion and exported $2.5 trillion in goods and services.

How is it going throw customs if you are sending US => China are you expecting China's customs to enforce US ban on Huawei ?

UK experience here....Customs can also check exports before they leave a country. Certainly that was my experience when we used to ship kit from the UK to South America (by way of FedEx).

We'd crate up the equipment then nail down the lid. Then a guy from customs would come out and pull the lid off and rummage around inside checking for contraband and to make sure we weren't shipping things that were on the tech exports naughty list.

OK Country other than US to China via FedEx

This is a form of protest.

I guess it's too radical but shutting down a business voluntarily if the rules are too onerous would also be a form of protest. Especially when the idea is that the business has allegedly been conscripted into unprofitable tasks.

Publicly traded companies don't get to just shut down in protest. They are obligated to take whatever actions would be interpreted as best fulfilling their fiduciary obligations to the stockholders.

To be clear, by "strongly disagree with" I meant "strongly think they should lose the suit"...