No, no, and no.  The company violated the Trade Agreements Act, which prohibits the sale of merchandise to federal agencies from a country which does not have a reciprocal trade agreement with the Untied States.  Direct is contracted with the GSA to sell a variety of products to the U.S. government, including office supplies.  Contracting with the GSA requires a company certify that all products sold be manufactured in one of a list (and it’s a pretty darn long list) of designated countries deemed to trade fairly with the United States.  The goods sold were of Chinese origin, and there is no agreement between China and the United States.

The allegations were also brought to light by a whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court in the District of Columbia.  The whistleblower, under federal statute, shares in the proceeds of the settlement or judgement, which in this case will amount to $67,500.

They also announced two new Centers for Excellence and Expertise.  One center focusing on automotive and aerospace will be located in Detroit, MI, and the other focusing on petroleum, natural gas and minerals will be in Houston, TX.  They are planning six more centers by 2015.  These centers will combine both physical and virtual staffing, taking advantage of the knowledge of local Customs officials who are parts of the import specialist teams that see a tremendous number of entries covering these industries.  They will also have access to Customs staff from around the country and headquarters to supplement their activities.

Along with CBP’s deployment of ACE and changing of the whole concept of the physical location of where work is reviewed or processed, CBP must determine how to work with importers and brokers and how they will communicate the needs, inquiries and requests of these CEE’s which may not be located in the same port as an entry is being filed.  How will information for an automotive entry being filed in Seattle be shared with Detroit?  If there is a question from one, how do both know the communication is taking place?

For CBP, this is more than just staffing a space.  It is creating orderly lines of communication with importers, other government agencies and the Customs brokers filing the entries.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the European Union (EU) signed today a Mutual Recognition Decision between CBP’s Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program and the EU’s Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) program.

CBP Acting Commissioner David V. Aguilar and Director-General Heinz Zourek, European Union Taxation and Customs Union Directorate (TAXUD) signed the decision, which recognizes compatibility between the EU and the U.S. cargo security programs. The signing marks a milestone in the CBP-EU relationship, completing the original U.S.-EU work program. In the future, both customs authorities will treat members of the other customs authority the same way it treats its own program members.

“I can look back with pride on the considerable work that was completed by CBP and TAXUD to make this effort come to fruition and that we always maintained the necessary focus on security throughout the process,” said Acting Commissioner Aguilar.

“Today’s decision on the mutual recognition of the EU and U.S. trade partnership programmes is a win-win achievement: It will save time and money for trusted operators on both sides of the Atlantic while it will allow customs authorities to concentrate their resources on risky consignments and better facilitate legitimate trade,” said Director-General Zourek.

C-TPAT is a voluntary government-business initiative to build cooperative relationships that strengthen and improve overall international supply chain and U.S. border security. C-TPAT recognized that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can provide the highest level of cargo security only through close cooperation with the ultimate owners of the international supply chain such as importers, carriers, consolidators, licensed customs brokers, and manufacturers.

AEO is a foreign partnership program that is used as a risk-assessment tool, provides less redundancy and duplication efforts, helps provide a common standard for trade facilitation, and allows for better transparency by providing closer collaboration among Customs Administrations and between Customs administrations and their partnership program companies.

The losses that Willis calculated do not include things like catastrophes due to natural disasters like Australia’s floods or Japan’s earthquake and tsunami or pirate attacks.  With regards to pirate attacks, the insurer said that these have moved from small opportunistic groups to “more highly organized crime organizations,” and cited the significant increase in demanded ransom payment amounts.

Cargo insurance is something that no shipper should be without due to the limitations of liability applied by all operators throughout the supply chain.  We suggest that importers and exporters speak with their Customs brokers and freight forwarders about their insurance needs and make sure that they are working with a reputable firm within the space.

Willis provided a list in their report of some of the top ten reported incidents in the past 12 months to Lloyd’s of London’s claims agency that is reflected above.

The suggestion is to turn off data roaming and turn off cellular data.  Hell, the simplest solution is to not even turn it on, unless you happen to be using an unlocked device in which case you can readily pop your US phone card out and replace it with one from the local market that gives you a local number and local usage rates.

Verizon Wireless announced that starting the last week in April, they will sell 100 MB of data for $25.  On a recent trip to the Caribbean, every time the ship I was on came into port and I flipped on my phone, AT&T’s local carrier of choice cheerfully sent me a message reminding me that if I wanted to use my data, that was fine, to the tune of $19.97 per megabyte.  If you wondered why I didn’t do much picture posting from my trip, at $60-$80 a full resolution picture…yeah, no.

Absent going the route of getting a plan, Verizon charges $20.48/MB, or $20,000 PER GIGABYTE.  Now, where did I put that aspirin again?

The critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (estimated remaining population between 350-550) has a protector in the Whale Alert app that is available for both iPad and iPhone.  It’s free and includes a single source of information about right whale management measures as well as the latest data about their detections overlaid on NOAA digital charts.  To reduce whale strikes, federal regulations require that vessels 65 feet or greater (cruise ships, for instance) to operate at 10 knots or less in certain locations along the East Coast of the United States in an effort to stave off whale strikes.

The app links near real-time acoustic buoys that listen for the whale’s calls and transmit them to an iDevice on a ship’s bridge.

More information about the app is available on the developer’s website.  I wanted to share some video of the app at work, but you’ll just have to settle for video of right whales instead.

Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S.–Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA) will support more American jobs, increase U.S. exports, and enhance U.S. competitiveness:

• Colombia’s economy is the third largest in Central and South America. This comprehensive trade agreement will eliminate tariffs and other barriers to U.S. exports, expand trade between our two countries and promote economic growth for both.
• The International Trade Commission (ITC) has estimated that the tariff reductions in the Agreement will expand exports of U.S. goods alone by more than $1.1 billion, supporting thousands of additional American jobs. The ITC also projected that the Agreement will increase U.S. GDP by $2.5 billion.
• The Agreement will provide significant new access to Colombia’s $166 billion services market, supporting increased opportunities for U.S. service providers.
• U.S. goods exports to Colombia in 2010 were $12.0 billion. Our economies are largely complementary in terms of the goods we ship each other. For example, Colombia is a large importer of grains from the United States while it exports a number of tropical fruits to our country. In addition, U.S. cotton, yarn and fabric exports to Colombia are used in many apparel items that Colombia exports to the United States.

As with all bilateral or regional free trade agreements, there will be rules of origin that govern what goods can be entered (for import purposes) and what the minimum origin content from each country is in order to qualify.  Further, the agencies who govern things such as agriculture or pharmaceuticals will have their specific requirements for goods to be admitted to those markets as well.  The implementing rules which govern all facets of the agreement are available on the website of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Moving the shuttle is no small feat; it was designed to get hurled into space at thousands of miles per hour and then land on its own.  As a child, I remember all of the launches; the Challenger disaster happened when I was a freshman in high school and nearly propelled me into a career of aeronautical and astronautical engineering.  Then I made it through geometry by the skin of my teeth and came to the realization that for the safety of those around me, heavy lifting math might not be my forte.

Which makes the video below all the more amazing.  Each mission the shuttle undertook involved so many people, countless hours of preparation and had to be conducted and executed to the highest levels of perfection.  Astronauts lives were and always are at stake.  There are two grim reminders from the life of the shuttle  program about how dangerous a profession it is.

NASA moved the shuttles from their landing points around the country with a modified Boeing 747 that gave piggy back rides to the shuttle.  The precision tolerance for the bolts and getting it properly in places is only three inches.  Go ahead; grab a ruler; see how little three inches is in relation to the length of a 747.  It is no small feat of human engineering to make this happen each and every time.

We salute NASA and the people involved in the shuttle program who are now looking for new professions, either within a smaller agency or in the private sector.  Until the next round of manned space flight gets underway in earnest, we have images like this to look at and smile about.

The agenda for the conference is online (see the link in the previous paragraph) and Scott and Tom Case will both be in attendance.  We are planning to have daily postings on the topics which were covered at the event, as well as direct commentary from presenters and attendees.  At this meeting, we are also planning to have discussions with our software provider, GMS International, about their internal software package that we use, and the external, customer-facing, industry-leading package G-TRAC, that our clients see and use.

If there are any topics which are of interest to you and you have questions that you’d like answered either privately or as part of our blogging series, please e-mail Scott directly and he will do his best to get them answered.