company could know all the ways its products could be used maliciously.
The answer is that the company must take reasonable care and once such
nefarious uses are brought to light, it must attempt to guard against them.
Reasonable care:The Customs Modernization Act of 1993 has made it
the responsibility of all importers and exporters to take affirmative steps
to ensure compliance with the Customs laws. For organizations, a compli-
ance program must be institutionalized, both to set up proper procedural
safeguards and to ensure that all employees understand what is required.
When the government audits a company, they want to see if the company
has demonstrated “reasonable care” to comply with the law.
These regulations may be unsettling, especially for companies that ship sen-
sitive materials, but there are ways to ensure you don’t fall victim to one of
these violations. The compliance regulations include a provision called rea-
sonable care, which means if a company can demonstrate it did everything
possible to avoid an illegal end use or dual use, it may not be held responsi-
ble for the misuse.
Taking Advantage of the System: Trade Preference Management.........
Trade agreements and most favored nation status can make doing business
in certain countries much more attractive. For example, the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) eliminated trade tariffs on many goods traded
between the United States, Canada, and Mexico including agriculture, cars,
textiles, and computers.
Such agreements allow companies to qualify for duty-free exports as long as
the goods meet certain criteria. Many companies leave millions of dollars on
the table each year by not taking advantage of these agreements because it
requires personnel or knowledge they don’t have. Companies should think
about taking advantage of global trade preferences.
Discovering the Different Ways to Manage Global Trade .......................
As you have seen, managing global trade is only slightly less complicated
than bringing about world peace or landing a man on the moon. So how do
companies manage it? Historically, the answer has been not very well because
there has not been a truly great way of tackling global trade tasks on both the
importing and exporting sides.
Chapter 8: It's a Small World: Effectively Managing Global Trade 153
