President’s Message

I would like to wish all of our members and their families a happy and festive 4th of July celebration, and a safe and relaxing summer.  

We are now officially entering into the second half of our year and we look forward to continuing at the same speed and momentum that we have built up in the first half. I would like to extend a big thank you to everyone for all their hard work and effort during the first half of the year.  We have had some great events, programs and educational sessions during the first half of the year and I am pleased to say that this will continue for the remaining months of this year.

We will start off July with the first of our three educational programs.  On July 22nd our Customs Compliance by Import Personnel workshop will be held at the offices of American Honda Motor Co., and the course will be led by Bruce Leeds.  We had great reviews when we first held this program so this is an encore performance and back by popular demand.  I am confident that Bruce will do a smashing job as always.

At the end of July we start our four-week comprehensive preparation course for the Customs Brokers license examination.  Our spring session’s attendance was great, so I encourage all our members to sign up early.  The course will once again be taught by Erik Smithweiss.

On August 5 & 6, also back by popular demand, is our Fundamental Export Compliance program which will also be hosted by Erik Smithweiss.  As we all know, the Obama administration is making a big push for exports and I encourage all members to attend this educational program.

Please make sure you have the Foreign Trade Association & Los Angeles Brokers & Forwarders Golf Tournament, September 30th, on your calendar. This is always a wonderful day for all.

Looking back at June, our webinar on the consumer product safety improvement act was very well attended, and big thanks goes out to our friends at Customs and Border Protection for putting together a great panel of speakers.  We look forward to continuing to work with the CBP on more programs.

I also want to take this opportunity to remind our members of the great promotional membership incentive that we are currently having.  Starting July 1st we are offering for only $50 additional members can be added to your current membership.  This offer is for a limited time, so I encourage all our members to take advantage of this.

At this time I also want to welcome our new members: Michael Vanderbeek, Port of Long Beach; Dave Langer, Kenwood USA Corporation; and Shigeru Suzuki, Kenwood USA Corporation.

We look forward to welcoming all our new members to our summer mixer; please stay tuned for additional details in the following days.

In closing, I would like to remind each member that I look forward to their feedback.   Your suggestions are always welcome. I am all ears!!  Lastly, I want to continue to encourage every member to recruit and sign just one new member in 2010.

Happy 4th!

Thank you,

Carlo De Atouguia
FTA President