Well here’s a new one!

I was going to order a few Christmas gift baskets for relatives and friends. In the past I had purchased some items from a French on-line merchant BienManager, French Gourmet Food and Gifts.

On background, their website notes that they are located in Lozere, in the center of France. They work with 200 producers that match traditional know-how and produce quality products.

They also note that they deliver worldwide.

Because of past purchases I am on their E-mail list. I very much enjoyed what I had purchased, and true to their marketing the quality and variety were excellent.

The marketing E-mail I received from them a few weeks back had some very nice looking baskets with just the right things for the folks on my Christmas gift list.

I went to their website, filled my shopping cart and behold – they do not ship to the United States.

If I lived in Andorra, Gabon, Mayotte, the Gilbert Islands, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Tuvalu, Equatorial Guinea, Poland or any one of 115 countries I could buy their stuff. But no U.S. of A.?

Well, perhaps it was a website error.

I wrote to the company and received a very speedy reply from Mme. Aurelie Verlaguet advising me that even though they have an FDA registration number they can no longer ship to the United States due to the Patriot Act.

Past deliveries were unnecessarily delayed because of Patriot Act requirements and as such they could no longer guarantee the quality of the products they shipped here.

Sad really. I wrote back to Mme. Verlaguet to express my regret, not only that I could no longer engage in open commerce with a reputable company, but that our “involvement” in the crazy politics of the Middle East has brought about such problems.

I guess that free trade and international commerce only apply if you’re rich enough to take your corporate jet to the store, or rather, you import the stuff yourself and take yet another cut from the consumer.