It has been a very rough year already for transportation. First we had the floods in the Midwest that shut down rail, highway and barge traffic. Then the oil spill near New Orleans that ground Mississippi freight to a halt. And now, hurricane season is upon us and Fay is battering Florida (and it’s moronic [more]

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I have received a lot of questions from coworkers and clients about the situation in Georgia. Obviously during a conflict, the hope of nearly everyone is that the fighting will cease and a peaceful resolution will be reached quickly. But from a business perspective, companies in EMEA, the US and around the globe want to [more]

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Everybody is aware of the trans-Atlantic trade implications of a weak US dollar, which has lost another 12% of it’s value against the Euro in the last year. European exporters are struggling if they deliver to US customers, whose purchasing power has been greatly diminished in the last few years (see the graph on Kevin [more]

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A wise man in procurement once told me, “if we could predict what currency was going to do, none of us would be in this business.” Although it won’t stop some people from attempting to break into the growing trend of currency ‘day-trading’, it should remind everyone in sourcing and procurement of 2 things. First, [more]

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I recently wrote about the 400% increase in steel prices over the past 6 years AND the lack of consensus among suppliers as to where the price is heading in the short term. In other words, prices are extremely high and relief may…or may not…be around the corner.
Given the state of things - high prices [more]

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