This is an ideal opportunity to reconnect with friends, colleagues, and customers while getting the latest updates and analysis from renowned industry experts. Book your hotel now. Early Bird Registration until 4/1/23 $339. The room block expires on April 17, 2023, or earlier, if the room block is filled. Make your reservations early!

Tuesday, May 9, 2023, 8 a.m. – 7 p.m. at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center (Networking reception from 5:30 – 7 pm)

Wednesday, May 10, 8 a.m. – Breakfast on the Hill with presentations by selected members of Congress, followed by individual meetings with Congressional Representatives.

The 2023 NADEC Annual Export Conference will bring together distinguished speakers including business leaders, high-ranking U.S. and foreign government officials, exporters, trade service providers, and trade promotion agencies. This Conference provides space for industry peers to share expertise, proven export strategies, effective resources, and more during concurrent sessions.

Featured keynotes and panels will be focused on Trade Policy Updates and Export Opportunities and Challenges. 

The NADEC Trade Policy Committee has identified timely issues that need to be addressed in order for U.S. exporters to have a fair playing field and competitive advantage in the global marketplace. (See Trade Policy Committee article below.)

ONGOING CALL FOR TOPICS AND PANELISTS! To ensure we are reflecting on timely topics of interest and the most current trends in the field, NADEC welcomes continued input from practitioners of ideas for panels, discussions and lectures related to exporting that would be beneficial to our conference attendees.

You may contact Anne Burkett, NADEC Vice Chair, at aburkett@naita.org with your input.

Contact Treasurer Mike Salerno ASAP to get your company or DEC, on the list!

treasurer@usaexporter.org or nadec@usaexporter.org

using the events submission form on the website (see below for more info).

Recordings of previous NADEC webinars can be found here

Join us as we discuss IN-STEP’s guideline changes for 2023 and how best to take advantage of the export grant program.

Export Compliance: Real World Guidance

A Certificate of Completion will be provided by the Nebraska District Export Council. This is a great opportunity for professional development hours or ongoing training requirements.

In partnership with Waste360, the U.S. Commercial Service is excited to offer U.S. exhibitors at WasteExpo 2023 services to assist in entering or increasing their sales in international markets and to help international buyers find the U.S. made products and/or services they are looking to purchase. 

Program information and registration is now live and U.S. exhibitors and international buyers can learn more and register here

Check back regularly as we will continue to add Commercial Specialists and international buyers to the site. Q: Contact: Monica.McFarlane@trade.gov

The shift in international trade flows from the Pacific to the Atlantic has made the ports of New York and New Jersey busier than that of Los Angeles. In 2021, container volumes reached the levels anticipated to occur in 2026-2027. So, it has been a challenge to right-size the supply chain capacity, with labor, driver, and chassis availability, etc. representing a few examples of the many factors affecting the efficiency of the system and increasing the costs of companies engaged in international trade.

Across the NYDEC region, supply chain and logistics have presented the main challenges during the pandemic – to help get information out to the exporting community, we decided in Summer 2022 to establish a NYDEC Logistics committee to highlight the expertise of our members in the logistics industry. Building on our World Trade Week awards breakfast which featured Beth Ann Rooney, Director of the NY/NJ Port Authority, NYDEC committee members are active in webinars and workshops that address supply chain issues and guidance on best practices in real time.

World Trade Week is the "crown jewel" of the NYDEC initiatives, as our Treasurer and long-time former Chairman Joe Schoonmaker likes to say. The annual event, now in its 14th year, falls in May during what was historically Fleet Week in New York City, and serves to bring together over 70 representative organizations from across the international trade ecosystem, from industry associations and foreign consulates to businesses and academia.

By David Day, Co-Chair, Trade Policy Committee

 As we step off into 2023, it is apparent that our entire global trading system which most of us have grown to both understand and appreciate, has fractured and is now in the process of realignment. This raises the potential for new or enhanced markets along with the reality of being foreclosed out of other markets. Covid and the Ukraine war have been catalysts for these shifts which are now beginning to take shape.

The formation of a new trading bloc between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran is now surfacing. A number of Latin American countries now lean in that direction. China’s enormous influence in Africa is another potential “lean.” The enhanced cooperation between the United States and the EU over the Ukraine war may result in some of the trade rough spots between the U.S. and the EU being ironed out.

In an effort to both stay on top of these shifts in the global trading relationships which we now have to deal with, and better assist our DEC members in dealing with this complex and changing trade milieu, the NADEC has reorganized its Trade Policy Committee with a series of subcommittees. This reorganization, announced at our mid-year meeting in San Bernadino, is to begin looking at trade initiatives that the NADEC may undertake in various regions around the world to enhance the opportunities for DEC members. This means focusing on projects or areas where the NADEC can work to improve the trade situation.

To that end, the Trade Policy Committee is now concentrating on trade globally with specific teams looking at the African continent, the Asia/Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and other trade initiatives, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Central Asia, India, the Middle East, the NADEC’s own Southbound Trade Initiative, the U.S./EU trade situation, the U.S. U.K. trade situation, trade infrastructure (ports, rail, trucking, aviation, pipelines, etc.), hospitality and tourism, organized labor, export controls & sanctions, etc.

We thought you might find it helpful to follow some of the fascinating work being undertaken by our NADEC team as a product of this reorganization.

By John Koons, IBT Online

Today’s online world offers business globalization at an incomparable speed, cost, flexibility, scalability and profitability compared to all other routes to market. The international internet business model is a paradigm change, where successful globalization is achieved through localization. Cumulative online local successes, market by market, delivers global success, hence the “glocal” mantra. Successful corporates seeking to grow their businesses globally are leveraging this optimal online route, local market by local market, and gaining their global success on an unprecedented scale.

Without borders, the internet offers companies across all sectors, opportunities to internationalize. There are some outstanding well published, even infamous, examples, including Amazon and Uber. However much glocalization is a no-brainer, getting it right is tough, demanding high levels of both online technical skill sets, coupled and with local market understanding. So let’s get you started on your glocal (global/local) program today.

Online localization is all about website localization and digital marketing, market by market. This means fully customized websites for each target market. Each country specific online presence must be relentlessly focused on and adapted for your local profiled target audiences, so the site(s) must be translated, easy to engage, do business and transact with from a local perspective. It’s all about an excellent Local User Experience (LUX). Many studies on LUX are concerned with the use of native language for local website presence. The obvious conclusion is that users prefer sites in their mother tongue.

Put the other way round, users will avoid sites that are not in their native language, defaulting to a 2nd or even 3rd language of questionable competence, when forced to. Take this further: target prospects will spend less time as visitors, be less engaged, buy less product/service or most probably nothing at all and refrain from using sales/after sales support.

Exporting makes more sense now than ever before. It's a great way to expand your customer base and increase sales, but it is also undeniably more complicated than selling in the US. And, exporting introduces many new challenges.

A Basic Guide to Exporting, from the International Trade Administration, addresses these issues head-on, providing the information you need to begin selling overseas with confidence.  You can download the entire 239-page PDF book, or a specific chapter, here.

The US Department of Commerce recently released the Environmental Technologies Resource Guide which contains market snapshots from over 20 countries around the world. The industry specialists in those markets would be happy to help U.S. exporters learn more and take advantage of the opportunities highlighted in the Resource Guide.

Check out the re-designed website: www.usaexporter.org