QUESTIONS?
David Noah
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July 8, 2020
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Automated Export System (AES),
Export Basics
“All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.”
That idea really confounded me as a child learning geometry. How could one belong to another, yet the inverse not be true? As my teacher explained, the difference lies in specificity.
David Noah
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July 6, 2020
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Automated Export System (AES)
Does your company export goods valued at more than $2,500 to anywhere other than Canada? If so, you’re probably no stranger to the U.S. Foreign Trade Regulations (FTR) that require your Electronic Export Information (EEI) be filed through AESDirect on the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) server.
The AESDirect filing process can be intimidating. (Just look at all the acronyms in my very first paragraph.) And the penalties for misfiling—or failing to file—can be tens of thousands of dollars. That's why many exporters pay a third party, typically their freight forwarder, to file on their behalf.
David Noah
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July 1, 2020
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Export Forms,
Free Trade Agreements
If you spend any time on the web (and who doesn't), I think you can relate to one of my pet peeves. It seems like every website I visit wants a unique password and username—one I have to either memorize or write down, so I can refer to it each time I log in.
If you don’t have that information handy, or you’re working on a different computer (say, a laptop vs. your desktop), you have to reset your password.
David Noah
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June 24, 2020
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Export Basics,
Incoterms
If you ship goods domestically, you may wonder why you need to know Incoterms too. FOB is FOB, isn't it?
Well, actually, no—it's not!
While the vast majority of companies in the United States use the shipping terms identified under the U.S. Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) when shipping domestically, these shipping terms aren't appropriate to use when exporting.
David Noah
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June 17, 2020
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Export Basics
Understanding and creating international sales contracts is a necessary and important part of a successful exporter’s toolkit. Differences in exporters’ and importers’ traditions and backgrounds, as well as laws and regulations governing international sales, can cause complications you may not have thought about, which is why written contracts are crucial.
David Noah
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June 10, 2020
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Free Trade Agreements
On April 24, 2020, the U.S. Trade Representative announced that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) will enter into force and replace NAFTA on July 1, 2020. In this announcement, the Trade Representative said this new free trade agreement will provide "significant improvements and modernized approaches to rules of origin, agricultural market access, intellectual property, digital trade, financial services, labor, and numerous other sectors."
While the new agreement is no surprise, the timing of its implementation caught many companies off guard coming in the midst of a pandemic and economic turmoil. These companies are now rushing to prepare for July 1.
David Noah
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June 3, 2020
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Export Basics,
Export Forms
In a previous article, I explained the purpose of several common export documents and the information they typically include. This article expands on that discussion and explains how to use them in the export shipping documentation process.
Here’s how they work together:
David Noah
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June 1, 2020
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Import Basics,
Export Basics
When the World Trade Month Association chose the theme for May 2020—Growing Exports in Uncertain Times—the group had no idea just how uncertain things would become.
A year ago much of the uncertainty of international trade focused on the United States' trade war with China, the United Kingdom's implementation of Brexit, the implementation of new U.S. tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, and negotiations between the U.S., Canada and Mexico on a new free trade agreement to replace NAFTA.
But things really turned upside down with the outbreak of a global pandemic that is infecting millions. In addition, it's causing major disruptions of world economies that, at best, is changing the way many companies are conducting business and, at worse, causing businesses to close and millions of workers to lose their jobs.
David Noah
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May 27, 2020
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Free Trade Agreements
If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ve probably seen or heard something (maybe a lot of things) about the end of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the beginning of a new trade agreement called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA.
Well, after years of talk, it's finally happened. On July 1, 2020, NAFTA was replaced by USMCA.
David Noah
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May 26, 2020
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Export Compliance,
Export Forms
Our office occasionally fields calls from people who are looking at our Shipping Solutions software as a short-term solution for their export documents while they are implementing their organization’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) export modules.
The concerned callers on the other end of the phone are worried about how long their ERP trade/export modules are taking to implement, and they see our software as an affordable bridge, making their export departments more efficient.