International Trade Blog

Before your goods are transferred, flown, shipped or driven out of the country, a proforma invoice will set the stage, serving as a negotiating tool between you and your international customer and a blueprint for the entire process.

As one of the first documents prepared in an export transaction, a proforma invoice acts like a quote and looks like a commercial invoice. This document, when correctly completed, contains several key pieces of information that will be used on many of the export forms you'll need to create later on.

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One of the more frustrating parts of this job is seeing the costly mistakes small and midsize exporters make when it comes to export compliance.

Because they aren’t “one of the big guys,” some U.S. companies think export compliance regulations don't apply to them (or that they won’t get caught if they don’t follow the regs). Instead, they ignore the regulations, or they breeze through their company’s compliance process and neglect to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s.

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USPPI. FPPI. EEI. POA…

OMG.

All the acronyms we use in exporting can make you feel a little overwhelmed. If you’re a little unsure how the FPPI fits into this alphabet soup, you’re not alone. Here’s what you need to know about the Foreign Principal Party in Interest (FPPI) in plain English.

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The language of exporting can be confusing. There are several different terms that are often used interchangeably, but they have small but important differences.

The differences between the definition of an exporter versus the definition of a U.S. Principal Party in Interest (USPPI) may seem minute but are actually important to understand. While many people use these terms interchangeably, they’re not exactly the same.

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Bills of lading are issued every day, but the transportation professionals who truly understand their significance are in the minority. With that in mind, we spoke with transportation law expert Brent Primus, J.D., CEO of Primus Law Office, P.A., and CEO and senior editor of transportlawtexts, inc. to discuss the Bill of Lading and its purpose.

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The phone calls started coming in last week: "I've got a shipment going out tomorrow, but I can't run a restricted party screening because the Consolidated List is offline due to the government shutdown. What should I do?"

Kudos to these exporters for knowing and understanding their export compliance responsibilities. Among those responsibilities is a restriction on doing business with entities the government deems a danger to U.S. interests.

Failure to comply is a violation of U.S. law and can result in civil or criminal prosecution, as well as denial of exporting privileges. I doubt very strongly that a government shutdown will be an acceptable excuse for violating the law.

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One of my favorite aspects of working with our customers is getting their feedback about the export processes and systems they use and love. However, there are some instances when I hear things that make me cringe.

This is especially true when I’m talking to people about export compliance. I ask them what they’re currently doing to stay compliant with export regulations.

Too often I hear: “We don’t have to worry about compliance because our items are EAR99.”

Facepalm.

What I then emphasize (often to deaf ears) is that EAR99 is not a pass to get out of the compliance due diligence process. In fact, determining the proper classification for your goods is only part of the compliance process—end use and end user make a difference!

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If you ship goods domestically, you may wonder why you need to know Incoterms too. FOB is FOB, isn't it?

Well, actually, no—they’re not!

While the vast majority of companies in the U.S. 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.

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We've made it to the big leagues. A Shipping Solutions blog post has been quoted in an article about Kim Kardashian.

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It's illegal to export to someone who appears on any of the government's denied party lists, also known as restricted party lists. And it's not just your customers. It's illegal to include any denied parties in any part of your transactions.

The best way to avoid doing this—and the only way to know for sure—is to run screenings for every single export that check all the parties against each denied party list.

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