From AAEI's President and CEO
Eugene Laney, AAEI President & CEO:
There is no science to creating an organization that meets the advocacy, education, and networking needs of its members. For more than 100 years, AAEI has taken on this challenge amid increasing scrutiny over what is imported and where our members conduct business globally.
In the coming months, AAEI will be launching several programs and services that will help our members become well suited for the next set of challenges.
AAEI’s annual conference will be in Fort Lauderdale and promises to “Forge a New Trade Renaissance.” AAEI’s new trade compliance courses, Importing 201 and Exporting 201, will reshape how trade compliance executives grow their knowledge base while effectively improving their company’s compliance.
One of AAEI’s best member benefits is networking. This year we will see increasing opportunities to leverage AAEI’s trade community through robust issue-based committees and working groups, industry-leading webinars, and local interactive opportunities.
There is a lot to look forward to at AAEI and we are thrilled to help you dominate your days and become smarter and better trade compliance executives.
From AAEI Thought Leaders
Lee Sandler, Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, P.A.:
Trade policy and regulation in 2024 will increasingly be challenged by hostile rhetoric to both imports and exports. Republicans and Democrats will compete to be the most protectionist, the most anti-trade-with China, the most restrictive of US technology exports, the most committed to the enforcement of trade laws (and the least focused on trade facilitation). The pronouncements on these issues will all be magnified and infused with emotion by Presidential election campaigns (not-withstanding the historic discovery by politicians, consumers and the press during the pandemic that there is something called a “supply chain” that is mysterious and important but unmanageable).
However, this rhetoric will not significantly change the trade issues already faced today: protectionist trade rhetoric will not be central to the 2024 political debates and voter decision-making, the expiring Congress is not likely to adopt dramatically consequential trade legislation (if only because neither party will want to allow the other to take credit for it) and international trade will continue to grow. In this mixed year of rhetoric and reality, someone during and after the elections needs to carry the message about the benefits of lawful and healthy two-way trade linked to meaningful enforcement that doesn’t override or devastate those benefits. This is the 2024 challenge for AAEI and its experienced professional members.
