Take Advantage of Free Trade Agreement Benefits

Posted on April 23, 2013 by marketing

Manufacturers can spend almost 50 percent of revenue on purchasing parts alone, which places low-cost sourcing at the top of any business strategy. To maximize your company’s savings, look no further than free trade agreements (FTAs).

FTAs allow your company to source from countries that have agreed to reduce their export duties with whatever country you are trading from, in turn reducing your landed costs.

Navigating these agreements can be tricky, however. You’ll often need a certificate of origin, as well as a Trade Program certificate, to prove a claim. You may also want the ability to compare your potential savings from several vendors as part of a multi-sourcing strategy. Lost already? Check out these 5 tips for using FTAs in your supply network, from Amber Road’s VP of Global Trade Content Anthony Hardenburgh.

“Armed with the right process and supporting technology, your company can achieve the next level of low cost country sourcing in your global operation,” Hardenburgh notes. Indeed, automating the FTA process can reward your company with significant savings and save you more than a few documentation headaches.

Has your organization taken advantage of an FTA to reduce your landed cost?

U.S.-Brazil trade to strengthen

Posted on March 22, 2013 by marketing

Brazil and the United States made significant strides to bolster the economic relationship between the two countries at the eighth meeting of the U.S.-Brazil CEO forum, which was held this week in Brasilia.

“It is clear that both the Obama and Rousseff administrations recognize that our two countries must continue to build on the strength of U.S.-Brazil economic relations,” said U.S. Deputy Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank said in a statement.

At the forum, representatives from both countries heard from private sector leaders on how they could help business in both nations succeed. The recommendations ranged from tax issues, to cooperation on infrastructure, to educational exchanges.

Trade between the U.S. and Brazil has skyrocketed in recent years – exports to Brazil totaled $65 billion in 2011, and the U.S. is Brazil’s largest source of imports. However, doing business in Brazil requires intimate knowledge of the local environment, known as the “Custo Brasil,” and infrastructure limitations pose a logistical challenge.

The Consul General of Brazil, Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa, will be speaking on these trade issues at Amber Road’s free Retail Seminar, “Financial Returns in Global Trade,” on April 17 at the Gansevoort Park Avenue Hotel in New York City. Aside from hearing a top expert discuss trade with Brazil, you can learn new strategies for delivering financial returns on your global supply chain and network with your peers at the beautiful Gansevoort Hotel.

Retailers looking to learn how to improve their global trade operations should register here!

WEBINAR: Understanding the Key Elements of Exporting

Posted on August 13, 2012 by marketing

Getting started as an exporter can be overwhelming – we’re here to help! Join Amber Road and the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday, August 21 at 2pm EDT for a complimentary webinar targeted at new exporters. During Understanding the Key Elements of Exporting: How to Get Started, we will show you what resources are available to help you:

Identify top and emerging markets
Monitor foreign competition
Analyze time series data
Obtain values and growth rates
Utilize technology to automate the export process

Speakers will include:

Katrina Rosen, Foreign Trade Division, U.S. Census Bureau
Scott Byrnes, VP of Marketing, Amber Road

Learn how technology can help create a competitive advantage for your company. Register today!

Amber Road Launches TradeWizards.com, a Free Cloud-based Portal for Global Trade

Posted on January 17, 2012 by marketing

Amber Road, a leading provider of Global Trade Management solutions, announces the launch of its latest trade compliance product, TradeWizards.com. TradeWizards.com is a suite of nine different research tools that helps companies import and export goods more quickly and affordably, while staying compliant with country specific trade regulations.

TradeWizards.com will enable users to instantly perform numerous global trade activities including: restricted party screening, product classification, and landed cost calculations. What used to require hours of manual interpretation of trade rules is now an automated process achieved instantly via TradeWizards.com.

Doubling Exports Needs Redoubling of Effort

Posted on August 12, 2010 by nathan

Remember the Obama Administration plan to double exports as a way to rebuild the US economy? Well it looks like the one part vision and a pinch of desire to change is not enough. The New York Times has analyzed the progress so far, with mixed results, and highlights the many barriers to achieving the goals of the National Export Initiative (NEI).

The challenges include:

Manufacturing Leadership. We are becoming more and more of a service economy. As the country is fighting to exit the recession, companies are uncertain of their ability to access capital and invest in the US in this time of increasing regulation and taxes. Simply put, manufacturing capacity and jobs are being exported (but unfortunately don’t count towards the doubling objective). So if you aren’t producing more how do you export more?
The Rising Strength of the Dollar. The Euro bottomed with the banking crisis and has caused the dollar to appreciate. While China has talked about slowly appreciating the renminbi, it is still promoting a steady flow of exports to world markets, and increasing competition for US Exports.
The Political Sensitivity of Trade Agreements. As the election year approaches, I can’t see Congress getting too aggressive on trade agreements. Clearly from a State-level there are winners and losers when trade agreements like NAFTA are implemented. Who is going to fire up the old job debate now when the economy is stuck in neutral and slowly rolling backwards?

Exports in the first four months of 2010 have increased by 17 % versus the same period in 2009. However today we learned that the real trade deficit increased in June from $46bn to $54bn.

Clearly we aren’t playing on a level field and struggle with trade barriers erected by countries around the world. For example, a wine industry expert says, “The single most restrictive barrier to wine exports remains the high import tariffs of most of the major markets buying U.S. wine today.”

Read more about the barriers to increasing exports at the New York Times: Hurdles Deter Obama’s Pledge to Double Exports.

Thanks to Lauren for the inspiration for this post.

Interested to Benchmark Your Export Operations?

Posted on August 1, 2010 by nathan

I ran across this report from Management Dynamics. Check it out.

Benchmark Report: Export Compliance Management

This report profiles export compliance programs of large, small, & medium-sized enterprises in many industries to reveal challenges companies face in managing export compliance. Receive a copy of the Export Compliance Benchmark!

Upcoming Webinar: Building an Export Management Program

Posted on July 20, 2010 by marketing

American Shipper is hosting an upcoming webinar, “Building an Export Management and Compliance Program.” Sponsored by Management Dynamics (in partnership with BPE), the webinar will take place on July 28th at 2 pm ET. The hour-long round table discussion will include the following expert panelists:

- Beth Peterson, President of BPE
- Joe Burks, Director of Trade Compliance for Cooper Industries
- Nathan Pieri, VP of Product Development and Marketing for Management Dynamics

These experts will discuss best practices for developing your company’s Export Management and Compliance Programs, including:

- Strategic value of your EMCP
- The core elements of an effective EMCP
- The steps required to build an EMCP
- Sharing your strategy with your C-level superiors

Learn how your company can implement processes and systems that ensure compliance with the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Best of all – it’s FREE! Sign up today.

Management Dynamics Releases End-Use Manager to Help Companies Reduce Trade Compliance Risks

Posted on January 20, 2010 by marketing

New On-Demand Solution Enables Cross-functional Teams to Create and Manage End-Use Statements for Customers, Vendors and Employees

Management Dynamics, a leading provider of Global Trade Management solutions, today announced the release of End-Use Manager, an on-demand solution that generates end-use surveys for parties involved in any cross-border transaction. The new solution allows a trade compliance team to comprehensively survey and collect end-use statements from customers, suppliers and employees, establishing a standardized process for managing and ensuring compliance with international trade regulations.

“Companies that manufacture and export licensable goods must ensure that their customer and the intended end-use are approved and in compliance with export regulations. However, today this is largely a manual process that is difficult to administer, especially across a global enterprise,” said Adrienne Braumiller, Partner, Braumiller Schulz LLP. “Management Dynamics’ End-Use Manager provides companies with the tools necessary to ensure that their shipments are delivered to the approved trade party and destined for friendly end-use.”

End-Use Manager can be flexibly deployed as a Web-based portal across any global enterprise and configured to meet the specific requirements of different business units. Surveys can be developed by business unit, transaction type, origin country and destination country, and populated with a pre-configured list of questions. In addition, all parties to the transaction are screened against the major sanctioned party lists.

Management Dynamics’ End-Use Manager offers the following key capabilities for companies to simplify trade compliance around product use and related professional services:

Enterprise Deployment – Implement an end-use process by geography, business unit, or product family with a flexible multi-organization deployment model and manage users with role-based security.
Survey Configuration – Develop a comprehensive repository of questions and manage assignment rules to dynamically assemble a complete survey for end-use statements by customers, vendors and employees.
Restricted Party & Critical Country Screening – Automatically screen each party to the transaction against a comprehensive list of restricted parties and embargoed countries.
Generate & Distribute End Use Statements – Dynamically generate end-use statements based on all associated questions as well as the results of Critical Country and Restricted Party Screening in a PDF format for easy distribution via email.
Review Audit Trail – Audit each transaction with complete visibility to the user and all survey questions and answers.

“Today many companies rely on an inconsistent and, often inaccurate, manual process to administer end-use surveys to determine if the intended use of their shipped goods is in compliance with export controls,” said Nathan Pieri, SVP Marketing & Product Management, Management Dynamics, Inc. “Our new End-Use Manager product makes it possible to manage the process centrally and distribute via a simple web-based solution for employees that must interact with customers, suppliers and contractors.”

House Votes Extends Trade Programs

Posted on December 15, 2009 by marketing

On Monday, the House voted to extend two trade programs for one more year, according to the Journal of Commerce. The General System of Preferences and the Andean Trade Preference Act will expire December 31st and have been enacted for several years.

The General System of Preferences allows developing nations to export selected goods to the United States duty-free and the Andean Trade Preference Act gives similar benefits for exporters in Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru in exchange for cooperation in counter-narcotics efforts.

“As Congress and the administration increasingly shift their attention to job creation, we encourage them to remember the important role trade can play in boosting the U.S. economy through exports,” said Chuck Dittrich, vice president for regional trade initiatives.

Extending the programs for one more year will give the U.S. government opportunity to analyze all preference programs available.

To continue reading, click here.

A New Free Trade Agreement Between Peru and European Countries

Posted on December 1, 2009 by marketing

The New York Times reports that Peru has recently signed a Free Trade Agreement with four European countries, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Compared to last year, Peruvian imports and exports are more than a billion U.S. dollars in trade with these four countries, and Peruvian exports has risen by 18 percent .

The new trade agreement will benefit the fishing and industry sector in Peru.

To read more, click here.

GTM Best Practices

Resources for trade agreement news and analysis, and other GTM musings

Tag Archives: Export