Thinking you can handle export compliance? Or, that your trading partners are reliable? Here's an example of the consequences of export control violations: Atmospheric Glow Technologies and former University of Tennessee professor J. Reece Roth.

American Shipper has a good article from last week: Informed Exporting. Looks like the BIS is trying to improve the amount of info available on their website for exporters. According to the article this includes online compliance training tools and information to assist exporters and a Web page where sources of publicly available information on export commodity classifications can be found. Good to see they are making an effort to improve and help exporters. Thanks, BIS!

There's been a lot of talk about Cuba in the last few months, especially since January 20th. On April 13th, President Obama relaxed the travel restrictions for Americans going to Cuba, allowing Americans with relatives there to visit more frequently.

According to the UK Telegraph, "General Motors is planning to build cars in China and import them into the United States, a strategy that could trigger further job losses and union anger in the US."

Today's supply chain is much more complex than it was ten years ago given the monumental shift from domestic to global sourcing. Also with new regulations like Customs 10+2 that place accountability on the importer, there is a big push to control (or at least have visibility) to operations at origin. So , business process mapping today plays a key role to understand product flows, process hand-offs and informational triggers.