On the 1st of January, 2010, we
all hit the ground running. I believe our jam packed and very productive
January, now on the books, is a positive indicator of how the year will
progress for our association.
On January 15th, we
held our annual FTA retreat in Temecula. The retreat was an overwhelming success and all board members left more
energized than when they arrived. We are
looking forward to a bumper year with many programs planned. We will also continue to put forth top notch
educational classes for our membership. We value the feedback from our members, so if you have any suggestions
or ideas on programs or educational seminars, please feel free to share these
with your board as we would love to hear them.
Our first program of the year,
“Advanced Apparel Import and Customs Compliance Workshop” was a great
success. We had a full house and, as
always, Tom Gould did a fantastic job. It was also great to have Customs Border Protection join us for this
event, and we look forward to working closer with Customs Border Protection on
other events in the coming year.
Our cooperation with AAEI allowed
our membership to participate in their regional seminar at a discounted
rate. We were very pleased to see so
many of our members take advantage of this.
From the outset, February is
shaping up to be another great month. Back by popular demand will be ISF Roundtable Discussion III, February 22,
2010. Now that ISF has entered the
enforcement phase, we encourage our members to join our "members
only" roundtable discussion. At
this workshop, our members will be able to share ideas with other members about
their own ISF experiences. Our past
workshops have been a great success and I encourage those members who have not
participated in the past to do so.
In February we will also hold our
first Roundtable Program for our members whose primary focus is exports. Exports in the USA have garnered some much needed
attention as was evident by our President’s State of the Union address. Our export roundtable program will be held on
Feb. 25th, and we will have more details in the near future.
On February 23rd, we
will also be co-hosting a special workshop on Broker Self Assessment, ACE, and
anti-dumping and countervailing duties with our friends at the Los Angeles
Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Association.
In February we will also start
our ever popular four week course, Comprehensive Preparation for the Customs
Brokers License Examination. Our first
session is February 13th, which is fast approaching, so we encourage
those members who plan to take the course to sign up as soon as possible.
As always, I want to remind all
our members that I welcome any feedback. If you have any suggestions for your association, I am all ears. I also want to take this opportunity to
encourage our members to try and sign up just one new member in 2010.
Sincerely,
Carlo De Atouguia
President
Inside FTA
