Brazilian meat exports have taken a big hit. On March 17, Brazil’s federal police raided meat packers accused of paying off inspectors to okay rotten and adulterated meat for market, capping a two-year investigation into official corruption dubbed “Operation Weak...
NVOCC US Import TEU Share Nears 39 Percent
NVOCCs again laid claim to a record 38.8% share of US import shipping volumes in 2016, with a growth rate in TEUs that outpaced the rate of carriers as a whole. Our bill-of-lading data shows that ocean carriers brought 20,953,723 TEUs in imports to US ports last year;...
Actively Seeking Trade Ties | Mercosur
Mercosur is looking for opportunities to do more cross-border business both within the five-member trade bloc and beyond. Foreign ministers are set to meet March 9 to discuss lowering barriers to trade among the countries that make up the “Common Market of the South”...
A Tale of Two Whistleblowers (Spoiler: Importers Lose)
by John M. Peterson, guest columnist Two recent cases brought under the federal False Claims Act (FCA) underscore how risky importing can be in this era of whistleblower lawsuits. One case won in court. The other seemed to have failed, only to get a second chance....
China in the Crosshairs as US Takes Aim at Imports
Has China moved into the crosshairs as the US takes aim at imports? Candidate Donald Trump promised pushback on Chinese imports during his campaign. Now the new president has tapped China critics and trade hawks to fill key trade posts in his administration, as the...
Li-ion Batteries Drive Chinese Lithium Imports
Lithium, last year’s hottest metal, looks set to be even hotter in 2017. With the new year barely a day old, mineral exploration company Birimian announced the sale of its Bougouni lithium project in southern Mali to China’s Shandong Mingrui Group. The deal signals...
Ban on Forced-Labor Imports Tightened
by John M. Peterson, guest columnist Congress recently (and quietly) removed an exception to the 85-year-old prohibition on importing goods made with forced and indentured labor. Section 910 of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2016 repeals the...
Playing Whack-a-Mole with US Steel Imports
“It can be like whack-a-mole,” one steelmaker exec told us recently. “AD/CVD duties do have an effect, but there is so much excess steel capacity in the world that when, say, China is blocked, here comes the steel from someplace else. Countries are watching for any...
Enforce and Protect Act’s Unfair Trade Remedy – Whistleblowing
by John M. Peterson, guest columnist For a domestic manufacturing industry struggling against unfair import competition, few things can be as frustrating as going through the long, high-cost process of obtaining an antidumping (AD) or countervailing duty (CVD) order...
Road to Cuba for US Exporters: A Journey over Peaks and Valleys
by John S. Kavulich, guest columnist For US businesses, normalizing US-Cuban commercial relations presents the prospect of 11.3 million consumers residing 93 miles south of Key West, Florida. Taken together, they make up a market where awareness of and preference for...