World Trade - February 2009 - (Page 7)

® INSIDE WORLD TRADE Group Publisher Tom Esposito Publisher Sarah Harding Editorial Director Neil Shister shistern@bnpmedia.com Managing Editor Lara L. Sowinski Art Director Michael T. Powell Contributing Writers Mark Bernstein, Richard Barovick, Gail Dutton, Winn Hardin, Joshua Kurlantzick, Andrea MacDonald, Clay Risen, Jeremy Smith, April Terreri, Amy Zuckerman WORLD TRADE MAGAZINE EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Grant Belanger Ford Motor Company Director South America Operations Steve Palagyi Director, Paciﬁc Region PRTM Consulting Erik Autor Vice President and International Counsel National Retail Federation Susan G. Esserman Chair, International Department Steptoe & Johnson Beth Enslow Global Supply Chain Resiliency Marsh, Inc. Kurt Cavano, Chairman and CEO, TradeCard Frank Vogl, Vogl Communications, Washington D.C. Thomas E. Crocker Co-Chair International Trade and Regulatory Group, Alston & Bird LLP Taking Stock in America “ t was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Now where have you heard this before? “It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” I SALES Publisher /West & Midwest Sales National Sales Director-East Sarah Harding 216.991.4861 hardings@worldtrademag.com Randi Giambruno 516.377.3906 giambrunor@worldtrademag.com Vito Laudati 630.694.4018 Fax: 248.283.6618 laudativ@bnpmedia.com Hong Kong Ofﬁce Publicitas Wendy Lin Tel: 852.2527.3525, Fax: 852.2528.3260 Steve Beyer Tel: 847.516.1977, Cell: 630.699.7625 beyers@bnpmedia.com NEIL SHISTER Inside Sales Manager/Print Asia Director Custom Media OPERATIONS STAFF Production Manager Marketing Coordinator Web Seminar Project Manager Reprint Manager & Trade Show Coordinator Group Audience Development Manager Multimedia Manager Corp. Audience Audit Manager Postal List Rental E-mail List Rental Single Copy & Back Issue Sales John Talan, 248.244.8253 Amanda Podina Bryan Cairns, 248.786.1613 Cindy Williams 610.436.4220 ext. 8516 williamsc@bnpmedia.com Christopher Sheehy Katie Jabour Catherine Ronan Robert Liska, 800.223.2194 robert.liska@edithroman.com Shawn Kingston, 800.409.4443 shawn.kingston@epostdirect.com Ann Kalb, 248.244.6499 kalba@bnpmedia.com WORLD TRADE HEADQUARTERS 600 Willowbrook Lane Ste. 610 West Chester, Pa. 19382 www.worldtrademag.com CORPORATE CORPORATE DIRECTORS Publishing Timothy A. Fausch Publishing David M. Lurie Publishing John R. Schrei Audience Development Christine A. Baloga Custom Media Steve M. Beyer Human Resources Rita M. Foumia Information Technology Scott Kesler Production Vincent M. Miconi Finance Lisa L. Paulus Creative Michael T. Powell Marketing Douglas B. Siwek Directories Nikki Smith Conferences & Events Scott A. Wolters Clear Seas Research John E. Thomas BNP Media Helps People Succeed in Business with Superior Information BNP Media Corporate Telephone: 248. 244.6400 Yes, the ﬁrst sentence of Tale of Two Cities, describing France in 1789 on the eve of the Revolution. But it’s unnerving (to say the least) to reﬂect on how the same could be said of the United States today. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” As Barak Obama embarks on his Presidency, he will be leading a country poised to endure a testing unlike any other that I can recall in my adulthood. Given what awaits us on virtually every front—ﬁnance, education, manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, Social Security—how trivial and inconsequential seem the political issues of the recent past (remember all the public energy directed to poor Terri Schiavo?). The sectors we cover at World Trade, supply chain and logistics, are leading indicators of economic health. Right now they’re ﬂashing danger warnings. Transportation, the canary in the mineshaft, has produced a rash of bad news. Maersk Line is cutting capacity by laying up ships, in effect declaring that it would rather not earn revenue from some of its capital assets than incur the costs of operation. DHL is withdrawing from the U.S. parcel service. YRC, whose stock was pushing $50 two years ago, trades around $4 as I write, its debt downgraded by Fitch due to concerns about the weak U.S. freight market. In a move of symbolic (if not also real) significance, ocean shipper Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) announced in January it would relocate its Americas headquarters from the port town of Oakland to Phoenix, Arizona because, according to its company spokesman, “costs there are much more manageable.” There are those who see us teetering on the brink of the end of life as we have come to know it. I choose to see light in this winter of despair! As Obama confronts his first hundred days, one can detect the emergence of what appears to be a bipartisan consensus for meaningful change. If anything this crisis has underscored, it’s the self-delusions that Americans have labored under the past decade. No, it turns out, markets do not ﬁnancially engineer away risk; no, the prowess of our military machine does not insure political wisdom in its use; no, all countries do not desperately want to become indebted consumers like us; no, our healthcare is not the envy of the world. After too long engaging in the denial that GE’s Jack Welch used to call “drinking your own bath water,” serious Americans have come to appreciate our condition of serious crisis. Which gets down to economics. History graphically shows that prosperity is the essential ingredient of social vitality. To be sure, other things—leadership, civility, equity—are also requisite. Being rich in and of itself is not enough. But without solid economic foundations, the best-intended systems collapse. We’re at a critical juncture. We can choose to re-deploy our national will and assets in behalf of a more broadly based, securely grounded prosperity that will empower more Americans to contribute to the well-being of the whole. Or we can choose to fragment and isolate ourselves, mismanage our resources (social, ﬁnancial, environmental), and continue to engage in the brittle, devious ideology of division that has rent apart our polity. The ﬁrst course of action can herald the coming of an American renaissance, what Dickens’ called an ‘age of wisdom.’ The second…well, let’s not even go there. Neil Shister, Editorial Director shistern@worldtrademag.com WWW.WORLDTRADEMAG.COM For subscription information or service, please contact Customer Service at: Tel: 847.763.9534 or Fax: 847.763.9538 or e-mail WTR@halldata.com PRINTED IN THE USA 7 http://www.worldtrademag.com http://WWW.WORLDTRADEMAG.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Trade - February 2009

World Trade - February 2009 Contents Taking Stock in America Confronting Corruption in Latin America Supply Chain Watch Tradewinds Where's the Goods? Where's the Money? Hope on the Horizon Managing Fleets in Turbulent Times The Impact of China's Economic Slowdown on U.S. Supply Chains The Fuel Volatile Supply Chain Getting the Most from On-the-Fly Transactions Managing Supply Chain Risk by Managing China Sourcing Capacity OECD Global Economic Outlook for 2009 'Natural' Agricultural Monopolies No More

World Trade - February 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.