A Playbook for Adapting to Minute-by-Minute Trade and Tariff Shifts

Machine Operated Script

Speaker 1 

We like to organize the solutions that can help you mitigate the risk of tariff escalation into two big buckets, right? The first would be technical solutions. These are what everyone calls duty minimization or duty avoidance, right? These are on the books opportunities for you to be able to drive down the amount of duty that you have to pick

Speaker 2 

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Speaker 3 

Hey folks, we’re on for a great show with simply trade podcast. Lalo today, I am excited with one thing, because there has been so much chaos with the tariff talks, and I’m looking forward to a good discussion with somebody who’s been on our show before. But how are you first off? How are you doing? My friend,

Speaker 4 

everything’s going good. Thank you, and thanks thanks for asking. We just got back a day ago, actually, from the NCV FAA annual conference. And it was, it was during the conference when everybody still had the tariffs. It really was pretty difficult to see. I mean, I felt bad for all these guys. I mean, and these brokers only because they wanted to get the education. They were there to get education, but, I mean, they were constantly on their phones. I mean customers just calling and calling and calling and but anyway, I mean, they had to deal with work, you know. And I know at least four or five of the booths that were there didn’t even show up. I mean, they were either attending new clients back home or just couldn’t travel because they needed to do this. I mean, obviously we all know about the tarots and everything that’s going on Liberation Day and all this kind of good stuff, but we decided for this show what we’ll do is that we’ll talk about how clients are again, calling their service providers. How can we deal with this, etc, and now a service provider who we have on the show, Eric Hargraves, he’s been, he’s been on our, on our show before, with Elliot

Speaker 3 

David. Eric, first off, welcome to the show again, and it’s a pleasure getting to see you. Thanks

Speaker 1 

so much, guys. I’m looking forward to it. Always love participating. And your content lately has been fantastic. I mean, you guys have been on top of all the tariff and positions and giving really good information out, so I appreciate you for that. I know the listenership appreciates it as well.

Speaker 3 

Well, with that, you’ve got an outline, when we were talking off camera here, that I think is going to be excellent. Why don’t you talk about the four things that we’re going to touch on, so that people can get an idea where we’re going to go with some of this. It’s folks. This is going to be a good one.

Speaker 1 

Thank you. Andy at Elliott Davis, we like to organize the solutions that can help you mitigate the risk of tariff escalation into two big buckets, right? The first would be technical solutions. These are what everyone calls duty minimization or duty avoidance, right? These are on the books, opportunities for you to be able to drive down the amount of duty that you have to pay. And then on the other buck in the other bucket, we have operational solutions, things that these are probably bigger in scale, like X, shorting your production away from China into another country, or, you know, optimize dynamic optionality in origin, manufacturing, markets and sales and operations, planning processes and so forth, those operational moves are complicated, and the calculus of global trade has changed so much that sometimes it produces a panic in individuals, where they are paralyzed by the analysis and they’re just not sure what to do. And the uncertainty coming out of policy is also having everybody just put the brakes on operational moves. So we tend to focus on these technical solutions, like first sale for export, duty, drawback, Foreign Trade Zones, tariff engineering, free trade agreements. These are all technical opportunities for you to recover some of the duty that’s that’s been escalating, right? And sometimes they apply and sometimes they don’t. So today we want to talk about like, real world examples from you know, some of our clients who are experiencing the pain of tariff escalation and their landing cost structures and their best cost country sourcing model. And we want to look at the exclusions that are available and annex two of the recent IEEPA reciprocal tariff, importance of tariff classification, accuracy and compliance. We want to talk about foreign trades. Own benefits and how that could impact your business, and just some stories around it. Hopefully, the sort of anecdotal analysis of this, of these storytelling opportunities can help you uncover maybe some opportunities for your business to take advantage of an FTC and then tariff engineering. And if we have time, we can talk about some free trade agreement issues as well, like the usmca and CAFTA Dr and how they may actually serve to benefit from this whole China policy.

Speaker 3 

All right, well, let’s go ahead and jump in on on that first one there is that you’ve got folks

with all of the,

Speaker 3 

I guess, chaos, and if you’re in the compliance already, if you’re the head of some transportation and import, export, you know, supply chain and all of that, there’s no doubt you’re getting phone calls. You’re getting emails, probably the phone calls, in particular, from the CEOs, from this senior the C suite, going, what the SAM Hill’s going on here? What do we do? Whatever. And you’re probably, like most people, you’re going, Man, I don’t have the answers. I have a few ideas, but it’s hitting so fast with that. Here’s the thing that and I said this in another show. Keep in mind that with a lot of stuff that’s I see Eric on the and Lila both. I see this on people are posting the gloom and doom. They’re posting things that are going, this is just crazy. We just can’t understand this. And we’re this that, you know, tariffs are just going to drive everything out. Our economy shot the heck and everything else that’s going on and yet. And yet. The scenario here is, I have said for decades, US goods have not been treated fairly. For, you know, for a long, long, long, long time. Doesn’t matter which administration was in there. US goods, everybody wants access to the US market. And then now that we’re pushing back, quite frankly, Trump is offering tariffs on goods that are still not matching what other countries are charging us. So in the midst of this cut chaos, you’ve got your budget, you’ve got your plan, all of that has been laid out, and now within less than you know a month’s time frame, he’s been in office less than three months. All of that has gone to, you know, up in the air. So there’s all this dust, all the static, all this stuff that’s going on, and yet, people are calling you What do you think? What are we going to do? Whatever it’s like, you don’t have the answers yet. It’s okay to say you don’t have the answers yet, but we’re doing some research. It’s coming at us so fast. People understand that the C suite. Here’s the thing, though, as you look at it, you got to keep a level head, especially for your team that is looking at things where they’re scared, they’re chaotic, they don’t know what to do. It’s like you being the leader. Need to maintain some calm. You know, even though it’s rough seas right now, you got to maintain a calm head. Here are some things that may give you some good advice. It’s not going to be the answer to everything, but it at least gives you a few things that you can put your staff on to research. Can we do this? Should we do this? Should we expand what we’re doing? If you’re already doing it, and all that. So Eric, that’s a tee up for you. I hope that that helps, but it’s go for it. But

Speaker 1 

it does. I’m gonna go back to what you just said. The level of uncertainty is through the roof, okay? And it is a moment in time. Let’s all take a breath, right? Don’t panic, but you do need to get prepared. You had a previous guest on the show, Cindy Allen. She’s phenomenal, great, great human being. First of all, but great advice. In one of the segments, she said, What do you do when you face uncertainty? You control what you can control, right? So our advice to clients has often been listen. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there right now regarding tariff and trade policy and global trade, and no one has a crystal ball. But there are things that have not changed, like these technical solutions. So generally, not always, right? Sometimes we have new tariff in positions under IEEPA that have no exclusions attached to them, so there’s no opportunity. But this last time around, when we did the reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day, when the original executive order was published, and then the following Federal Register notices were published with the annexes, we did get annex two that listed certain critical industries and certain classifications that had exclusions. And so I immediately, one of our shareholders called me and said, Hey, I have this client. They manufactured largely in India, and we need to take a quick look at how this is going to impact. Them. So we get on a call, we dig into their imports, we get some of their tariff classifications, and we in real time, because this is unfolding so fast, right? I think moments earlier, the executive order was published on whitehouse.gov and then we were still kind of before the Federal Register notice was even published. So we’re on the call, and we’re looking at annex one, which lists all the countries and the reciprocal tariff rate. And at the time, India was going to be faced with a 27% I think it was, forgive me, if that’s wrong, it’s been moving so fast, okay, but I think it’s 27 and so we begin to dig in. We read down through the executive order, and there is a section there about exclusions, and they say they’re listed in Annex two. So we go over to annex two, and we pull it up, and thank God. We scroll down through the classifications. Some of their products are covered by an exclusion, okay? And so take a minute and remember the things that are unchanging, because there are some things still within your control. The basics of global trade and tariff impositions and executive orders and Federal Register notices and exclusion processes, remember the things that are still within your control, and act in a moment of uncertainty with a with a modicum of respect for one another and a little bit of certainty and clarity. And you can build some tremendous goodwill with your clients right now. You can build some tremendous goodwill with your colleagues, who are probably face, especially if you’re in the supply chain, function, purchasing, sourcing, distribution, fulfillment, shipping. You guys have a world ahead of you. Take a deep breath. Don’t panic, but do be prepared well.

Speaker 3 

And the scenario there is where you have all this stuff that’s going on. You need to be looking at your options anyway. Part of the scenario here is that if people have continued to use China as their main source for a lot of goods, guess what, China has doubled down on a lot of things. Now here’s, let’s, let’s back up a minute. One of the things I need to emphasize here, what is the purpose or the use of tariffs? Why do governments use tariffs. You’re trying to change the behavior of a country, in a sense, is in their policy. And these what you were talking about India. India’s goods come in here pretty much either duty free or very, very low duty. Yet US goods go to India, and it’s like 50% right off the bat. It’s, it’s unreal. Doing business with sending goods to India has been very bureaucratic. But it’s not just the US. It’s, it’s all the different countries. Same thing with China, same thing with, you know, like Brazil or all these different countries. Here’s the thing is that in these scenarios, now that these tariffs have been coming back. The issue is, again, you have great opportunity for these imports to come in. You looking at it just like what you said, but here’s what I’m saying, you don’t want inexpensive imports at the expense of US exports. So I see a scenario here, even as companies are looking at the import scenario strategically, you also need to be looking at the opportunities. What I mean US export stands to within the next year to explode, you’ve got to compete with price and quality and all the cycle times and all that, all if with everybody else around the world, but we’ve got to get through this initially. And in this initial scenario, you’ve got suppliers, and a lot of people been moving away from China. Keep in mind, China has been playing hardball with everybody around the world. They’ve dominated things, they’ve they’ve bullied things. They have not been playing fair, if you will. They have not been adhering to the World Trade Organization. So now the scenario you’ve got is with the different sources. Now, to your point, your your client, hey, is has a source out of India. Thank goodness. They have an exemption there. But the point being is, as a service provider, you’re going through, you’re having to read this. You know, it’s live, it’s right there, and going through it. But you know what you’re looking for, folks, this is where you need experts in the field to come alongside you. They’re not going to have it off the top of their head necessarily. It’s a case where, and Eric, I guess this is where I come back to, is if somebody’s got a question they’re looking and it’s like, Well, okay, you’re going to narrow it from a very broad shotgun type approach and say, well, let’s narrow it down to what is it that specifically we need to look at? In your case, it was a supplier out of India, and more specifically, certain commodities that are being supplied out there. And you were able to zero in. Probably not all of the commodities had exemptions, but at least some of them. So now all of a sudden, like you said, you. It gives you credibility in finding that you find it together and you build your relationship. I love that is where you’re saying that you’re helping your clients, but it helps you as well, right? Of course,

Speaker 1 

of course. And I think the value is in you said it. The value is in the relationship, right? I guess we have transactional relationships that only do business with us because they need something. But the reality is, most of the time, those long standing relationships are the ones that allow for the betterment of both of your companies that you’re going to be able to build on for the future. And giving good advice is just one way to help a client. It builds goodwill, obviously, and yes, we can monetize that with fees and whatever, and we can help clients. But the reality is, they’re in a moment where they’ve got really, really proficient at making a great product that the world needs, and they’re helping some people who really need help with what they manufacture. Okay, it’s a beautiful organization, but the reality is, at the end of the day, they’ve been so laser focused on product engineering, that global trade compliance has been an afterthought, and this is a story for a lot of people, supply chain compliance, risk aversion optimization has totally been focused on just product development and not necessarily process improvement or compliance with global trading systems. So this moment in history, and everybody says this, but it is really true, this moment in history has elevated global trade compliance and supply chain executives to be at the sea level. We now have to make decisions at the sea level about where and when to make product and how and what is the best opportunity for us to grow for the future? The calculus of that decision has completely changed, right? And unless you’ve got a trusted partner going back to that relationship, how important that relationship is, you really don’t know where to start,

right? Well.

Speaker 3 

And to your point, those All right, we’ve been talking on some things over the years, and there are companies that have done a very good job of vetting their suppliers as well as vetting the products. And in that scenario, they’re going to have a bit of an advantage everybody’s in this pot, if you will, but they’re going to have a little bit of an advantage in that they have already looked at different options as well, and suppliers and what to do if you are in a company that’s gotten caught flat footed in this scenario, and now you’re trying to get it’s not the end of the world. Okay? So you’re gonna have to work through a lot of things, but that’s where a good if you will, consultant or partner that comes alongside you to help guide you through these things. Hence the C suite. You now need to really look at things in your strategic sourcing. Especially is, is this potential risk or not? Not only are you looking at the tariff risk now, but most people would look at it is okay. What about the supply chain? And we’re going to have enough transportation avenues here and whatnot. And remember, a lot of people moved away from Asia, or at least China at one point, because the ocean lanes were so full, you couldn’t get on there, and it just backed everything up. Then the ports couldn’t handle the volume on the West Coast and whatnot. Then you had the scenario of the Panama Canal that had the drought, so they cut down the frequency through there. So you’re looking at all kinds of different scenarios here. Well, now this is part of it. This tarot, you need to assess your trade relations with countries and those kinds of situations equally as you do the transportation. Yeah, all right, so there’s, there’s one good thing is, like, check out your annex one as well as annex two, and do your research. But you got to narrow it down. You can’t be just trying to read everything. What specifically is it that you’re trying to research? Go into it and look at that scenario, and you can write it up, or have your people write it up and come back and say, at least you’ve got an answer on this Yes, and go from there, right?

Speaker 4 

Yes, guys, we’re at 20 minutes and we’re just covered. One thing we need to move on. I guess if Eric wants to get his other three points on, I think Andy, you just repeated everything that Eric said, so that might likely get cut out. So anyway, I just want to, I just want to say, I don’t want to disappoint anybody. But when the public, when we publish the shows, we usually cut out a lot of the redundant stuff. And so just Andy, anyway, so go ahead. Okay, I got it.

Speaker 1 

Andy, you just said something that kind of could lead me to my next point about the importance of tariff classification compliance. Just you know your tariff code is your global passport for your products, right? That’s the baseline. That’s the starting point. And if your supply chain team is not adept at classification, and you’re at risk for negligence penalties or gross negligence, or hopefully not fraud. But the reality is, a lot of times. Companies have become so good at manufacturing a certain product with a supply partner overseas, and they may rely on the supply partner to classify goods, or they’re getting their HTS classification from somebody right if they’re not doing it themselves, and if they have not demonstrated reasonable care in that effort, they’re at risk for some negligence penalties, and one of my clients experienced just that. And it’s a global company. They do a really great job. They make fantastic products, but their European counterparts were the ones during product development that were establishing the tariff code, and their domesticated inventories were all classified by their European counterparts in the supply chain team, and they were, unbeknownst to the US entity, the European entities, were classifying goods and putting it in the ERP system, and that was pushing through to all their automated POs that go out, Edi right

through their ERP system.

Speaker 1 

But it was the European classification from the country in which they were doing business right. They were selling to a particular European country. So the first six digits were correct under the World Customs Organization methodology, but their HTS, us, their US classifications were incorrect, and they had received a penalty from customs, which led to a really broad audit of all their tariff classification, which we found out that nearly 70% of their classifications were old, like outdated in their ERP system, and that their customs broker had been like making adjustments on their entry forms to get it cleared with very little product knowledge. So now we’re at the point where not only was it wrong in the ERP, but it was getting corrected, but then it was getting corrected incorrectly, and where they were receiving penalties from from customs. So one best practice is make sure that you’re doing a classification audit right World Customs Organization updates every five years the publication for and then all of the member nations need to ratify those adjustments into their own version of the HTS. It is harmonized across all those trading partners, right? But the last four digits in the United States are governed by the US, ITC, and those can be updated on almost an ad hoc basis. So you guys really need to start implementing, you know, a classification audit program. It used to be that we would look at that once annually and be okay. Now I recommend everybody’s doing it at least quarterly. And basically whenever there’s a new executive action coming out, which is very frequently, because modifications are made to the classification codes, modifications are added to Chapter 99 that are governing all the IEEPA in section 301, and section 232, so you need to be well versed at your tariff classification process. And you need to build a compliance program there, if you don’t have one today. Well,

Speaker 3 

and I would say your compliance departments, or whoever’s handling your classification folks, you need to be putting in some requests. You need to beef that up companies, you need to be looking at putting additional resources because all of this, asking questions and all that they still have to get their regular job done. So some of this needs to come back around. So that’d be an action item to look at it to say, how much extra support do you need? Do you need to outsource it? And thirdly, is that you need to get on a frequency of validating that. All right, what’s next? Eric,

Speaker 1 

I’ll say we had a client that this was really, really cool scenario called, called earlier this week. You know, last week we had Liberation Day. We had, you know, all of these country specific reciprocal tariff rates that were issued, and the annex were published, and we had 57 countries with reciprocal rates. Everybody else gets 10% and so everyone’s beginning to do the calculus of global trade, which has dramatically changed. What’s their landed cost going to be? What’s their exposure? But in one case, we have a particular multiple cases. But the one I’m going to tell you is we had a client with, uh, inventory in a in an FTZ in the United States. So we have a Foreign Trade Zone. We have inventory that’s already within that Foreign Trade Zone, and they are now looking at a couple of different countries of origin that are about to be hit with. If it was China at the time, it was 34% reciprocal. Vietnam was at 46% reciprocal. India was at 27 you know. And then we had a few that were sort of cap to Dr that were going to get a 10% right. And so they’re looking at their inventories. And, you know, the captain Dr product was already admitted into the zone under that free trade agreement. So when they go to make that entry, they were going to be okay. They were going to have 0% but the other products originating in India and Vietnam and China, they’re looking at massive increases. When they withdraw goods from the zone, they’re going to incur in. Pay duties at these higher rates, right? So now they’re looking at, man, maybe we should just go ahead and withdraw all the product today. Maybe we should domesticate the inventory. It’s like accelerating your shipments, right? It’s kind of the same ideas, like, let’s bring it all in before the tariffs actually take take place. And so we had a conversation about this, and I said, I, I don’t know if I would do that, because you’re going to incur this massive cash out, you know, on, on X million dollars of inventory right now, and your next, your next automated payment to customs is going to be really huge. Consider the cash flow ramifications of that, but also consider that this is a moving target. Folks like, Please don’t make supply chain decisions based on threats like truth social posts and let’s wait. And sure enough, they went ahead and domesticated all this inventory. And the next morning, we pulled back all the reciprocal tariffs down to 10% and we said we’re going to give ourselves a 90 day window to negotiate. And out of that 90 day window there may be some bilateral agreements that take shape, that take eliminate or terminate those reciprocal tariffs, and so they now have all this cash out in the next it’s going to be, certainly within 45 days, probably within the next 30 days of their next, you know, automated payment to customs. And had they just been a little bit more patient, perhaps they would have been able to kind of see the forest through the trees and not rush into now also at the same time, let’s give them credit where credit is due. That might be a good decision, right? Because at the end of the 90 days, those tariffs may go back up to the reciprocal rate. It may, you know, Vietnam may actually, at the end of 90 days, end up with 46% so then in that case, they did mitigate the risk. I bring this up because the point of the point of this conversation is FTCS are a beautiful way for you guys to mitigate the risk of escalating tariffs. However, in the language of the executive action and the Federal Register Notice, all of the goods now being admitted into zones has to go in under what we call foreign privilege status, and there are some some stipulations to that. Meaning, when you admit that product into the Foreign Trade Zone,

Speaker 5 

you lock in the tariff rate and the tariff classification.

Speaker 1 

So even if you do some manufacturing and there’s a tariff shift from one code to another, and the new code is lower. You don’t get the benefit of that according to the language in the Federal Register. Notice you’re locked in at the higher rate. So at the time of admittance into the zone, that’s the rate of duty you’re going to pay. Even if you do some manufacturing in the zone and you lower the rate, the new item is a lesser rate, you still have to pay the higher. So you’ve got to be careful. You have to know your supply chain and know what transformation is going to incur within the zone to be able to take full advantage of it. But it is a great way to mitigate the risk well

Speaker 3 

and on to that point. The other thing is actually, if you have multiple sources, if you will, and you’re running multiple FTCS, or bonded warehouses, or whatever part of that may be, where, if you’re using an FTC, chances are you’re also selling internationally. So you may want to concentrate on selling that product that’s in the FTC, if it’s going to come into the US at a higher rate, that you can go ahead and get that out and fulfill what you would normally do, just fulfill that FTC, that’s fine, is fulfill any domesticated inventory already at the lower rate, and go on from there. So you’re gonna have to make that decision and look at it. So that’s one of those inventory balancing supply chain and and you’re sourcing and all that is, you’re balancing all that out. It’s a little different wrinkle, but it’s something to look at again, bringing in your your compliance folks that can tell you, well, here’s what our if we bring it out now, this is what the duty rate is, if we use something over here, and you have the round table discussions that I think will help. Yeah, right. Well, all right, tariff engineering, that’s, that’s something that people talk about. You’re basically, what is tariff engineering, and what is it you’re trying to

Speaker 1 

do? The most famous example is how tariff engineering kind of originated. Was way back. I forget 1913 or something. This guy was bringing sugar in right, and the only law in the books that determined the duty rate applicable to the sugar was its color. So this guy laces it with molasses to change it to a darker color and imports it under a lesser duty rate. And that was kind of the birth of. Of tariff engineering. You know, today, now we’ve got the classic example of Converse Chuck Taylor shoes with the felt on the bottom. It allows them to classify it as a slipper and not a shoe, and save millions of dollars, right? Well, this is available for our importers, and they need to look at the products they’re manufacturing and potentially tweak some designs to qualify for a lower duty rate. So we have a client who’s involved in making like, think of Magic Eraser sponges, right? And they come in at a particular duty rate, and we found, working with them, that if they could engineer a like polyester scouring pad on one end of the sponge that it would reduce their landing cost liability by like nearly 12% now it was more than just a tariff engine. I think engineering the tariff, we were able to get them down to like three to 5% savings. But still, think about this. You make one small design tweak on a segment of your products, and it allows you to save three to 5% on that most favored nation rate of duty. Now, it doesn’t necessarily lower your section 301, or your ieepas, right? But this is it changes the classification under which you’re importing for the actual commodity the article you’re bringing in, and it can be a really effective way of lowering or minimizing your duty upon entry into US Commerce. So it’s something you should give careful consideration, and it’s going to require a really highly informed cross functional team from engineering, product development and sourcing and manufacturing, sampling. You guys are gonna have to go through the process and see if you can still bring in first quality products that have been tweaked to qualify for a lower duty rate. But that’s a project worth entertaining for a lot of our clients

Speaker 4 

and Eric have been also listening and following some other ideas as related to tariff engineering, but a lot of them call it a country of origin engineering, right? Where, yeah, you’re right. You cannot get rid of those ieepas or the RTS. But if you’re in Mexico and Canada, if you’re declaring usmca, you will get rid of it. So they’re talking about maybe moving and doing that substantial transformation in Mexico and or Canada, where it will qualify for usmca, and be able to save all that, right? I mean, have you been hearing something like that or, I mean, it may even be a segue into what you said. Maybe we can cover free trade agreements, yeah,

Speaker 1 

but let’s, let’s just jump there real quick, because free trade agreements, I think, are on the table right now, and when we say we’re going to pause for 90 days to have bilateral negotiations. Maybe we get some new trade agreements coming out of that. Maybe they’re not free trade agreements, but they’re preferential trade agreements where we lower the duty of all rates coming in from that particular country. But yes, I mean, I’m in discussions right now with several customers about taking advantage of usmca, and it’s a great idea. I will just say one word of caution is, you know, the review in July of 2026, is coming up. And so when we did the border IEEPA of 25% against Canada and Mexico originally, way back in February. We say way back, and it was two months ago. We are moving so fast, but when we did that, in my opinion, what’s going to come out of that are some changes to the rules of origin and the regional value content about not allowing that back door for Chinese goods to make it into the US, duty free. So I think we’re going to hone in on the finished good that crosses the border from Mexico to the United States. We want to be relatively sure that the vast majority of value added by that substantial transformation was done by either Mexico or the United States, and not let some third country take advantage of it with raw materials coming in. So my guess is, when we get to July 26 and usmca is renegotiated or reviewed, rules of origin and tariff shifts and regional value content are going to be at the forefront of that negotiation. I you know, all free trade agreements operate on two basic ideas. I mean, it’s more it’s obviously way more complicated than this. But one is a tariff shift, right? Which you bring in all these raw materials that are under one tariff, and they’re substantially transformed into a new tariff, and if they’re substantially transformed in that country, they can qualify for duty free treatment. The other is this idea of regional value content, where the finished good that crosses the border enough value has to be added by the preferential countries to be able to qualify for that duty free treatment. And I think when we start talking about all these bilateral. Agreements. You know how complicated that negotiation gets, because the US wants market access for our exports into their country, and they want market access for their exports into our country. And so what type of exports can you actually provide us that are of benefit to our consumers? And what can we provide you that are of benefit to your consumers? And now we’re going to bolt on and stop trading with China. And so we’re going to get into all these tariff codes and tariff ships and the products where the manufacturing base of that particular country can satisfy a need in the United States at a preferential rate. But in order for us to give you that preference. We want you to do this for us as well. And this is where, like, we started talking about the reason for tariffs. Like, tariffs were always about revenue. They were always about protectionist trade policy, but now, and they were always about reciprocity, right? Those three, but now we’ve added on a third, a fourth, sorry, major component of tariffs being used for diplomatic reasons unrelated to trade. We’re talking about national security issues, economic security issues. We’re talking about forced labor and ridding the world of some social nefarious things going on in supply chains. And we’re now talking about tariffs being used for non trade purposes like diplomacy, and I think, you know, we’ll see how it shakes out, but the next 90 days are going to be awesome. Like, I mean, we better watch it. We better stay focused on it, because it’s going to be

Speaker 3 

fun. Well, I love all this. You’ve covered those key four things, the other items, I think we’re going to have to come back for another show, Eric, because you’ve got some great discussions where going around the table for for other items that are in the, in the, I guess, the supply chain arena right now. Excuse me. So folks, I’m going to tell you Eric. We’re going to have his contact information with the show notes he’s been on several times. Every single time you come on. Is some great information. We get a lot of good comments from your your show here, Lalo, any last words from you?

Speaker 4 

No, not, none. Not, not right now, other than just be on the lookout for a lot of the stuff that we heard at ncbfa was and actually at icpa before, that is how they appreciate, and we’ve actually had guests talking about it since then, on how they appreciate, and they like the like a support group almost, you know, like people talking about this with people, with other folks that are in the same situation we have at global Training Center. We do have a trade community that we’ve had for a while now, but now we’re opening it up and making it more, let’s say, for not just our customers at buyer training, in other words, just anybody who is in trade. So we’re working on that, but listen in for some announcements on that. Every once in a while, we’ll put it on the podcast or circulate it, but that’s meant for everybody to go in there and talk about their situations. Maybe there’ll be an expert like Eric or like Cindy in there inside that community as well, and they’ll offer their ideas as well. So anyway, that’s what we’re trying to get at, and trying to help the community and the trade community probably understand and deal with this day to day, because there’s no way simply trade. Well, there is, but feasibly, there’s no way we can put out an episode every time there’s a tariff change or an announcement, because it’s just not possible. The editing on this, believe me, guys, it’s not a walk in the park. So anyway, so anyway, but that’s all I wanted to say. And also, obviously, thank Eric, because he’s been not only a great guest, but he’s also an amazing instructor at global training center as well.

Eric, you have been fantastic, my friend.

Speaker 1 

Thank you very much, guys. I always love talking with you. It’s a good time. It’s like talking to two old friends that understand the industry and want to help people. And the end of the day, that’s all we’re really doing, is trying to help folks. So thank you for this opportunity.

Speaker 3 

Folks. Have a great day. Thank you again, Eric and Lalo. I hope you all have a wonderful week.

Speaker 4 

Thank you very much for joining us. Simply train is brought to you by the generous contributions of global Training Center. You can follow the show and GTC on LinkedIn or Twitter and other social networks. Make sure you check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today’s show with all the important links, also make sure that you share this with a friend and subscribe on your favorite streaming platform. We really like hearing from you. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to rate and review wherever you listen to this podcast. If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the show or would like to sponsor, simply trade or suggest any topic you would like for us to discuss. Please contact us via email at simply trade@globaltrainingcenter.com or you can DM us on Twitter at simply trade pod. Thank you again for the privilege of your time. Happy trading. Simply trade is not a law firm or an advisor. The topics and discussions conducted by simply trade hosts and guests should not be considered and is not in. Intended to substitute legal advice. You should seek appropriate counsel for your own situation. These conversations and information are directed towards listeners in the United States for informational, educational, entertainment purposes only, and should not be substituted for legal advice. No listener or viewer out of this podcast should act or refrain from acting on the basis of information on this podcast without first seeking legal advice from Council. Information on this podcast may not be up to date depending on the time of publishing and the time of viewership. The content of this posting is provided as is, no representations are made that the content is error free. The views expressed in or through this podcast are those of the individual speakers, not those of their respective employers or global Training Center as a whole, all liability with respect to actions taken or not taken based on the contents of this podcast are hereby expressly disclaimed.

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