U.S. authorities seized more than 200,000 toy dolls from China at several ports of entry this year due to high concentrations of phthalates, a group of banned chemical compounds considered dangerous to children.

Amber Road would like to thank all of those who attended American Shipper’s “A Place at the Table - Bringing the Export Team into Strategic Discussions” webinar. The attendees asked some great questions, but unfortunately, we ran out of time and were unable to answer all of them. The presenters were kind enough to provide us with written responses to those questions. Here are a few:

As federal defense contracts continue to be cut, the state of Virginia has launched a $2 million campaign called “Going Global” to help its numerous defense-related contractors capture international export opportunities.

As you are well aware, China has its own set of complex trade regulations. Companies are turning to China Trade Management (CTM) software solutions to help them take advantage of the Processing Trade program. With the possibility of reducing product cost by 25% or more, they can’t afford not to!

Supply chains are by their very nature connected, information-dependent, and undergoing constant change. Most senior supply chain leaders have become accustomed to developing and deploying operational strategies on the back of software applications that are generally legacy systems underpinning specialty bolt-on tools. The result is sometimes clunky and rarely flexible in the face of changing business conditions. In “Supply Chain and the Future of Applications” SCM World reports on how the idea of “cloud” based software promises to change this.

Surprisingly, while overall international freight forwarding grew by 3.2% to $63.2 billion in 2012, ocean freight saw large growth (11.5%) while air freight experienced significant decline (4.2%). This disparity can largely be attributed to companies increasing visibility into their supply chain and no longer needing to rely on air transport, which was traditionally the more reliable yet costly method.

Mastering global transportation management is a feat for even the most sophisticated shipper. With extensive growth in today’s global supply chain, shippers don’t just manage the movement of goods from one country into another – rather they manage freight flows across multiple countries, with sourcing markets quickly evolving into consumer markets.

The global trade world has been buzzing about Amber Road’s acquisition of Shanghai-based EasyCargo for about a month now, since it introduces robust China Trade Management functionality into an already strong compliance offering. Gartner offered its “First Take” on the acquisition and what this move means for Amber Road customers and the global trade management industry as a whole:

The owner of two New Jersey defense contracting businesses was arraigned this week for allegedly transmitting military blueprints to India without a license, a major violation of U.S. export laws.

The World Bank report, Doing Business 2014: Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises, identified a huge uptick in the pace of business regulation reform, with nearly 240 business-related regulatory reforms in 114 nations enacted last year. With this increase, companies need to ensure they have trade regulatory compliance processes in place.

Let's be honest, our blog can't cover it all - so we love to make recommendations for other great global trade bloggers. One of Amber Road's favorite industry blogs is Beyond Supply Chain, written and maintained by SCM World's Kevin O'Marah. 

Establishing an Export Compliance Program (ECP) can be a daunting task. So far in our Export Compliance Webinar Series, we have addressed two of the three key steps of building an ECP, Restricted Party Screening and Product Classification.