In this week's episode of the Imitation Nation Podcast, Sven and Shabbir talk with Piotr Stryszowski, a long time expert in the global counterfeit trade problem. Check it out! Shabbir (00:01) Welcome to Imitation Nation. This is Imitation Nation, maybe episode 36, and we have our first European guest on. So this is the first time we've tried Sven (00:11) Yay. Shabbir (00:11) to span an ocean. Our guest today is Piotr Stryszowski from the OECD. We've got a lot of exciting things to talk about. And if you don't follow Piotr on LinkedIn, you should. Shabbir (00:22) And he has a he has a lot to say about the counterfeit trade and we're gonna talk a little about that today. But thank you for making time for us. It's very well it's very generous of you. Piotr (00:33) Thank you for having me. Shabbir (00:34) tell us a little bit about y how you got into illicit trade because you're obviously a international expert in illicit trade, which is why we we are so excited to talk to you. What what's your origin there? What's what was your entree and what do you find most fascinating? Piotr (00:52) Well, Shabbir thank you so much for this introduction. I'm really honored. I'm an economist by training, right? So sometimes asking myself, who am I to tell people something? my best skill is to bring people to the table smarter than me, offer them some coffee, excellent French croissants, and listen to them. but back to your question. well, I'm an economist by training. Piotr (01:15) Right, I did my PhD in the economics of IP, intellectual property, how actually intellectual property adds value to products, to countries. It's a legal concept, but how to assess economically IP? Is it possible? Right. That was that was my main thesis. and then after I completed this, I got a job at the OVCD. Piotr (01:41) Where eventually, after some years, I ended up managing working party on countering illicit trade. Right, so it's it sounds a bit of a stretch from IP to illicit trade, but actually it's not. Right? The our working party is dedicated to understanding illicit trade today. Piotr (02:06) At the OECD, well, we are mostly economists, right? we work with data. We want to understand things using data, using numbers. so when you apply this logic to illicit trade, you see that there is lots of counterfeit goods being smuggled today. That's explains the kind of the move from like an IP economist, smart, arrogant, and young. Piotr (02:32) To well, I wish humble, humble bureaucrats trying to understand what's the hell is going on out there in this world. but well, thank you for mentioning me being as an expert, right? My my role here at the OECD, I see it, is to understand how illicit trade looks like and to help our member countries with the knowledge, right? But I gather knowledge from data. Piotr (02:58) And from talking to people who know more about this subject than me. Sven (03:02) Very cool. Well, Piotr, it's really, really nice to meet you. I read your most recent report w with a lot of interest. you know, for me I found it really, really fascinating that the study that we're gonna discuss, kinda report that you've done, it it's it's really the first study I've seen that had been done, and you were one of the lead authors on it that was trying to statistically demonstrate kind of Sven (03:28) what the relationship is between forced labor and weaker labor protections and illicit trade. So can you talk about what what you have found in that report? What's the connection between forced labor and counterfeit goods? I I I'd love for you to share that. Piotr (03:47) Excellent question. maybe before jumping to this question, some like background information. our work, I mean, we are in the international organization, right? Meaning that our work is overseen by our member countries. We're really proud to work for member countries, right? What we do is supposed to help countries and citizens, people in these countries. we work a lot with the United States. Piotr (04:13) With the PTO, with DHS, with the State Department. And because we work for countries, sometimes we don't have the luxury Sven (04:22) Yeah. Piotr (04:22) of going into our interpretations. We must be very conservative in what we publish, in what we what we do. Right? So I'm just saying this as a preemptive, well, I know how to say it. Piotr (04:36) strike to say that our findings are sometimes trivial and obvious, Sven (04:40) Yeah. Piotr (04:41) right? Well you mentioned link between forced labor and counterfeit trade or trade in counterfeit goods. When you think about it conceptually it's in a way trivial or it becomes straightforward. But our work is really to to change a narrative from seems to into is right so Sven (05:02) And Piotr (05:03) We need to be comfortable to say, yes, there is a link, right? Or now our work, as I said, we want to gauge the problems, we want to understand the problems using data. And we have a big data set that comes from customs offices around the world of seizures of counterfeit goods, right? Basically. Piotr (05:28) Customs officers that the are supposed to do 10,000 jobs, right? Seizing everything from well, narcotics to substandard medicines. They also need to seize counterfeits. And we Sven (05:41) Mm-hmm. Piotr (05:42) receive regularly data from customs offices around the world about seizures of counterfeit products. What's been seized, where from, where to, quantities, brands, all the information. Piotr (05:56) These data are confidential. We work with them in-house, we don't disclose them. What we disclose is just aggregates results. And we use this data really to understand better the trends in counterfeiting and relation of counterfeiting with other measurable phenomena. Sven (06:16) Mm-hmm. Piotr (06:17) But this is just to say that measuring counterfeiting is difficult, right? Customs data are not perfect. Piotr (06:24) It's not like, you know, your weight, you put on a scale and say, crap, it's too much. I wish Shabbir (06:28) Yeah. Piotr (06:29) my weight was measured with such precision as counterfeiting sometimes. Shabbir (06:33) Ha ha ha ha. Sven (06:33) Well yeah, since it's Sven (06:35) no since it's clandestine in nature, it makes sense. It's much harder to see and you you try to Piotr (06:39) Exactly. Sven (06:39) triangulate it with all the data. So when when you looked at all of it and you're triangulating it all and you're looking at all the seizure data, what did what did you see? And how did you now make the correlation to force labor? Piotr (06:50) Exactly. So I mean it it's it's not it's in a way easy, right? Our research is easy because we don't want to go too deep to keep robustness of results at a high level. We looked on the one hand at available measures of counterfeiting, right? Because these customs data provide us inputs into aggregated measures of counterfeiting. these measures are done at country level. Piotr (07:17) We want to assess to what extent exporting countries export counterfeits. Right? So for each country in the world, we have a like an artificial index that assigns certain intensity. Of course, some countries are general exporters of everything, right? So this should be also taken into account. But we have this one on the one hand, we have index of counterfeiting. And here, on the other hand, we have existing measures of forced labor. Piotr (07:46) Here we talk about available indices, right? And we need to take into account all other measures that could impact this relationship, right? So here, like being an economist, I'm throwing everything that comes to my mind, ranging from economic variables through some trade measures to also other socioeconomic variables. I look at trends, anything, anything that comes to mind. Just to check if there is a direct link. Piotr (08:15) between both counterfeiting, export of counterfeits, and well protection of labor that cannot be explained by anything else. And here importantly, when we look at forced labor, we also looked at in accidents. So like I would say how safe labor conditions are, and at child labor, right? So like all different indices. Piotr (08:44) yeah, that's what that was the that was the black box, right? That's Sven (08:47) Yeah. Piotr (08:48) in a way simple, right? We want to keep it simple. And and the findings are again not surprising. There is a link, there is a correlation between both. Counterfeiting, yeah. Sven (09:00) So when you when Sven (09:02) you just said there's a correlation, is there did you find a correlation or did you find a causation? Like which which link did you find? Piotr (09:09) Well look here, I'm really no that we could not establish causality, right? but also when you think about it, I what would be what would be the origin of a problem? The fact that there is bad guys that export goods that are counterfeit, or the fact that these guys do not only I mean these guys don't it's not like they only don't care about IP laws but also about labor laws right? It's it's like Piotr (09:37) Two sides of the same coin. And here I would say it's more a philosophical question about causality. It just says that there's bad guys who don't care about IP and who don't care about, well, human rights, right? Who just look for money, no ethics. Shabbir (09:53) Yeah. Shabbir (09:58) You know, we have talked on the on the podcast a lot about the change, the constant change in shipping requirements and and entry requirements in different countries. The biggest story, I think, for us that affects illicit trade is the change in what we in the US call de minimis shipping. I guess you might call it the same thing in Europe, but the rules around de minimis have been changing for the past two years, and they've had a really notable effect on illicit trade. Shabbir (10:27) especially for illicit goods that come out of China into the US. At least that's that's the part I'm familiar with.
