International Business and Technology Blog

Last month The Wall Street Journey's Hannah Karp published an interesting article entitled “Teaching Americans to Export*."  It covers the recent success in Los Angeles, where export volume is growing at 31%/yr. vs. 10% for other US ports.  Key to this is a regional focus on export, where their success is even more remarkable given that only 15% of California's manufacturers are exporting.   

I was recently called upon by fDi Magazine, to serve on the judging panel in their 2nd Global Ranking of Economic Zones. Alongside other leading experts on the panel, I assessed more than 600 free zones from 120 different countries, judging them on criteria including facilities, promotion strategies, services, transportation, incentives offered, and cost-effectiveness as well as drawing on my expert knowledge and experiences.

 
FDI pages of an EDA’s websites come in many shapes and sizes but, for me, there are three clear messages that are important to make the FDI pages useful to a company interested in the area. These are:

For the first time the European Union and the United States will accept each other's organic certifications.  On February 15, 2012, after two years of negotiations, the organic food trade agreement was signed at the BioFach World Organic Trade Fair in Nuremberg, Germany. The deal that will come into effect in June will open up US$50 billion market combined value, and will avoid costly administrative duplication, strengthening the competitiveness of this sector.

Numerous companies have increased profits by exporting their products and services abroad, by accessing lucrative markets beyond borders of their home countries. In many cases, exporting is the only way to achieve a profitable business by fully exploiting markets around the world. However, many companies wrongly assume that exporting their goods abroad will solve a slowdown in sales in their home market.

Whether your objective is to attract new clients, increase brand awareness, or deepen customer loyalty, social media can offer you a great solution, as 36% of the content posted is related to brands! Yet do not forget that trends and preferences for certain types of social media change across different countries. When you explore the opportunity of entering the world of social media, also pay careful attention to the selection of appropriate types of social media with respect to your business type and targeted audience.

The EU and the USA have the strongest and most dependent economic relationship in the world. Their combined GDP accounts for around half of the world’s GDP and for nearly a third of international trade flow. Every year they invest large sums into FDI projects and they are each other’s major importers. Today, we will focus in our blog on the EU product demand, the most imported goods from the USA to the EU, and top EU countries interested in imports from the USA.