If you are a Canadian importer or non-resident importer (NRI) you will want to get up to speed on CARM, which will be fully implemented in May 2024. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) project is a multi-year digital initiative that will change how CBSA collects duties and taxes for goods imported into Canada. Through CARM, CBSA will modernize and streamline the process of importing commercial goods ..read more

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In the last two articles of this series, I concentrated on the issue of country competitiveness and fairness of trade. In this article, I will discuss the role banks play in international trade and the potential risks you should be aware of ..read more

I remember riding in the car with my children when they were learning to drive. Whenever we approached an intersection with a traffic light, they always knew what to do when they saw a red or green light—stop or go—but a yellow light always caused a certain level of anxiety ..read more

Does my product require an export license? That's a question you should ask before every export. To find the answer, you first need to answer two preliminary questions: What is the Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) of the product? What is the destination country ..read more

The World Bank has published its Logistics Performance Index for the first time since 2018. The LPI ranks countries on critical dimensions of trade, including customs performance, infrastructure quality and timeliness of shipments. The data used in the rankings are derived from a survey of logistics professionals answering questions about foreign countries with which they trade. Respondents are asked to identify their line of business (freight forwarder, transport operator, export/import trader, customs broker), typical freight mode used and country in which they are working ..read more

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Successful exporters and importers know how to measure the risks associated with doing business with potential new suppliers or clients and the countries in which they reside. In my last article, I introduced the World Bank project Doing Business, which measures the ease of doing business in each country of the world. My previous article reviewed the first five sets of data included in the report. In this article, I will discuss the remaining five, with data from 2019. Remember these data sets are freely available on the web. (Note: These Doing Business results will be replaced in 2024 with B ..read more

In the world of international trade, it’s essential to stay on top of changing regulations to ensure you’re meeting your compliance obligations. One such regulation that companies should be well-acquainted with is the Lacey Act, which is undergoing changes this year that will expand its scope to include a wider range of products. Enacted to combat illegal logging and the trade of illegally sourced plants and plant products, the Lacey Act has significant implications for those involved in the import of certain commodities, including some products containing paper, wood or plant-based materials ..read more

In the early 1920s, the agricultural world was revolutionized by the invention of hybrid seed corn in Ames, Iowa. Hybrid seed allowed farmers in Iowa to increase their corn crop yields by 20% per acre. Although it was invented in the early 1920s, by the time it became widely used by Iowa farmers, a decade had gone by. It had taken so long for the innovation to become widely adopted by Iowa farmers that in the mid-1930s a sociologist from Harvard University, Dr. Bryce Ryan, came to Iowa to study the why and the what—why it took so long to catch on and what the factors were that eventually caus ..read more