Navigating Tariff-Driven Litigation: Contract Clauses and Defense Strategies

Jonathan P. Bench | Kirton McConkie PC

Jonathan Bench assists companies, entrepreneurs, and invests funds in international and domestic commercial transactions. He has extensive experience guiding clients to creative and pragmatic solutions in their mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, financing, and foreign direct investments. His global clientele spans Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas. Jonathan has worked and consulted in the U.S., Asia, and South America, and he is fluent in Chinese and Cantonese and is working toward Spanish fluency.

He is passionate about diving deep into cutting-edge industries and difficult markets to make sense of chaos in those fast-paced and often murky legal environments. He represents a variety of manufacturers, brokers, and retailers in their global supply chain structuring and restructuring projects, typically involving China or nearshoring away from China to Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Jonathan has particular interest and expertise in emerging technologies, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain. He represents founders who are developing AI tools for a range of industries and use cases across consulting, marketing, education, customer service, and middleware to automate AI processes. His blockchain experience encompasses layer-2 blockchain developers, international DAO communities, NFT artists and studios, metaverse companies, and celebrity brand influencers.

He is a sought-after speaker and writer for national and global organizations on U.S. and international business development. Jonathan has written over 150 blog posts and articles and presented on various business and legal topics over 80 times on four continents. He serves on various boards and dedicates time to mentoring entrepreneurs and students through several nonprofit organizations.

His contributions have earned him recognition as a top author on Lexology and accolades from various industry groups as a prominent lawyer. Most recently, Jonathan was named to Utah’s Legal Elite 100 and described as “an excellent attorney but also a thought leader in two very different industries: international business and blockchain.”

From selling homegrown raspberries and window-washing services to non-emergency medical transportation services, Jonathan understands the entrepreneurial grind from the inside. He describes himself as a businessperson who went to law school rather than a lawyer who studied business. His clients value his ability to think like a business owner as he provides them with pragmatic legal guidance while ensuring that his legal strategies underpin, not undermine, his clients’ larger strategic goals.

In his spare time, Jonathan is often with his wife Mary Ann and their five children, exploring the beautiful Utah outdoors, practicing martial arts, enjoying music, and working on getting his Spanish to be as good as his Chinese.

Ngoson Fonkem | Amundsen Davis LLC

Ngosong Fonkem provides legal consultation to numerous domestic and foreign companies by facilitating market access for both the United States and international markets. With extensive experience managing U.S. customs tariff and duty matters, he provides support to companies for improving import and export compliance. This includes detailed assistance with import classification, duty mitigation, and interactions with Customs and Border Protection, Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Department of Agriculture, as well as guidance on export regulations such as OFAC, ITAR, and BIS/EAR.

Ngosong currently assists companies of all sizes with day-to-day compliance with U.S. trade laws and those of other nations, and related audits, investigations, and civil enforcement proceedings.

Ngosong frequently speaks on international trade-related business and legal issues and regularly makes presentations on these issues in the U.S. and abroad. He has authored numerous articles on trade-related topics in peer-reviewed law journals, business journals, and magazines and has co-authored a book on international trade and geopolitics titled, “Trade Crash: A Primer on Surviving and Thriving in Pandemics & Global Trade Disruption.”

Prior to his current practice, Ngosong was a law professor at the oldest private university in Malaysia and was an energy intelligence management consultant in Southeast Asia. As a law professor, he developed the ability to contextualize and understand policies driving the law, which assists him today in anticipating risks for his clients’ businesses. He continues to teach courses on international trade and global business as an adjunct professor at St. Norbert College Schneider School of Business.

Ngosong’s interest in becoming a lawyer stemmed from his love of travel and learning about new cultures, aiming to solve legal problems across multiple jurisdictions. He has an enthusiasm for embracing difficult challenges, which his clients appreciate when they are navigating unfamiliar legal territory. When not in the office, you can find Ngosong playing soccer or on a sailboat, a hobby sparked in his youth by reading stories of sailors, merchants, and explorers

Griffen J. Thorne | Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP

Griffen Thorne is a corporate and transactional attorney and Chair of the Lewis Brisbois Cannabis, Hemp, and Regulated Substances Practice. Griffen guides businesses through the complexities of M&A and corporate transactions, as well as real estate leasing, acquisition, development, and finance transactions.

Griffen has years of experience representing entrepreneurs, investors, startups, financial institutions, and operating businesses in the cannabis and hemp industries in transactional, licensing, and regulatory matters. He has been designated as an expert in cannabis litigation, regularly contributes to legal and industry publications, leads panels, and provides insights to media outlets like the Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, MarketWatch, Bloomberg Law, and Law360.

Griffen also represents clients in other domestic and international industries, including healthcare, franchising, cryptocurrency and technology, international manufacturing and sales, and beyond.

Before beginning his legal career, Griffen studied music at the University of California, Berkeley. He studied law at Loyola University of Chicago, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal and graduated third in his class of 250 students.
In his free time, Griffen enjoys spending time with his two daughters, traveling, and fly fishing.

I. Tariff law and recent court challenges | 1:00pm – 1:30pm

II. Performance-based contractual and common-law defenses (force majeure, frustration of purpose, etc.) | 1:30pm – 2:00pm

Break | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

III. Contractual risk mitigation strategies | 2:10pm – 2:40pm

IV. Pitfalls in international trade agreements | 2:40pm – 3:10pm