TradeLane

It seems hard to believe that it is November already and the holidays are just around the corner. I awoke this morning to the fresh news of Donald Trump’s somewhat surprising victory despite polls and “experts” leading us to believe the opposite.  I thought it would be a good place to start for my quarterly post. 

Last week, we got the news of more terrorist attacks, this time in New York City, North Jersey, and the Jersey Shore. This hit a bit close to home as I grew up on the shore and have lived close to all of those places at one time or another. 

It wasn't shocking, but felt more routine, which in and of itself is shocking. We've seen this in various forms in  Nice, Baghdad, Turkey, Belgium, Pakistan, France, and a dozen other global locations. 

I’m often tasked to speak about some of the trends that I see in global compliance. I’m privileged enough to get to interact on a daily basis with our practice leaders throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. This allows for a more global perspective than most. The regulatory landscape is in a state of flux that has been rarely seen during my career, but to narrow it down, here are some of the big hitters that are shaping global compliance.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is gaining momentum. If “TPP” isn’t as popular as “lol”, it will be soon. That’s because the TPP is a big deal. We’ll be doing several blogs over the coming months as additional details regarding the Agreement become known so you can stay up to date. 

For now, let’s start with the basics. The original plan of a four-nation pact between Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, and Brunei has grown to be a 12 country partnership impacting 800 million consumers, and now includes the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Peru, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Australia. Together, this makes it the largest regional trade accord in history, with a combined GDP of 28 Trillion USD. To put that into perspective, that is 40% of all Global GDP, 33% of global trade, and accounts for 40% of US Imports and Exports. 

I have had better starts to the New Year. On the first Monday of the year, I don’t know who was tougher to get out of the house and off to school that first day, my wife (a teacher) or my toddler. Already this week, the Stock Market had dropped like a lead balloon, the Middle East was in shambles, China was giving signals of slowing down, North Korea supposedly tested an H-Bomb, and I spilled coffee on the tie I got for Christmas. Let’s hope next week goes much smoother. 

I imagine a lot of people are going to make predictions on Global Trade this year, from volume trends to new Free Trade Agreements, or whether the ACE deployment will be successful. While everyone else is making predictions, I am just going to pay special attention to these five events in 2016: