Ship to one of these countries or parties, and senior executives can expect severe penalties, including jail, warns former Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service George Weiss. And that’s just on the U.S. end. Other lists are maintained by other countries.

Fancy doing business with Action Knitting in Hong Kong? Better not. It’s a front for Saddam Hussein.

The Software Solutions

While the solutions favored by J.C. Penney and PM Global Foods (see "Bills of Lading," this page) address the particular international trade problem that they are designed to ease, they don’t amount to more than a bite or two from the obstinately indigestible elephant of global trade.

There’s the matter of denied party compliance. Osama bin Laden probably has bigger priorities than sourcing his next shipment of chicken wings, but dealing in high-tech is a different matter. Companies in the electronics, aerospace and engineering industries must make sure that they’re not shipping materials to people who shouldn’t be receiving them. And it’s not just a matter of shipping machine tools to Iraq, which even Joe on the loading dock might recognize as a dumb idea, but shipping them to, say, United Kingdom-based Falcon Systems?a designated alias of the Iraqi government.

And what about Harmonized Tariff Schedule codes on exports, the classifications that will be used by the destination country in order to levy tariffs, contained in those two weighty 4-inch volumes? Or gathering the information necessary to prove a claim for duty drawback? Slickly produced documentation is a start, but it’s far from the whole story.

At Montreal-based electronics distributor Future Electronics, which has offices in 35 countries, Vice President of IT Robert Lapointe selected a system from Dulles, Va.-based Vastera that aims to meet these needs. Installed in export hubs in Bolton, Mass., Singapore and London, and soon in Montreal, the system provides all of Future’s export documentation, as well as carries out denied party compliance checking. "We have multiple shipments crossing borders every day," notes Lapointe, pointing to heightened post-Sept. 11 security checks. "We can’t afford to have them delayed, and the documentation needs to be perfect for them to get through without holdups."

While AMR Research of Boston calls Vastera the largest trade specialty vendor, and the one with the most comprehensive functionality, it is far from the only company in the emerging international trade logistics category. At the Alexandria, Va.-headquartered WorldWide Retail Exchange, CIO Don Norman last April oversaw the implementation of an international trade solution designed to bring its members (currently 61 of the world’s largest retailers and suppliers) significant savings. Web-based, it provides buyers and sellers with standardized documentation and gives buyers true "landed cost" comparisons that include the effects of tariffs and quotas through a link to the international trade functionality of NextLinx.