53-year-old customs broker wants to ‘Make Trade Boring Again,’ saying you won’t believe how complex cheese is these days

After a half-century immersed in the world of trade, customs broker Amy Magnus thought she’d seen it all, navigating mountains of regulations and all sorts of logistical hurdles to import everything from lumber and bananas to circus animals and Egyptian mummies.

Then came 2025.

Tariffs were imposed in ways she’d never seen. New rules left her wondering what they really meant. Federal workers, always a reliable backstop, grew more elusive.

“2025 has changed the trade system,” says Magnus. “It wasn’t perfect before, but it was a functioning system. Now, it is a lot more chaotic and troubling.”

Once hidden cogs in the international trade machine, customs brokers are getting a rare spotlight as President Donald Trump reinvents America’s commercial ties with the world. If this breathless year of tariffs amounts to a trade war, customs brokers are its front lines.

Few Americans have been exposed as exhaustively to every fluctuation of trade policy as the customs broker. They were there in the opening days of Trump’s second term, when tariffs were announced on Canada and Mexico, and two days later, when those same levies were paused. They were there through every rule on imports of steel and seafood, on cars and copper, on polysilicon and pharmaceuticals, and on and on. For ever...