Via The World Trade Centers Association

The World Trade Centers Association is making new member recruitment campaign assets available, designed by Cara Debkowski of the World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia to all Centers of the Association.

World Trade Center of Greater Philadelphia’s “Stamp of Approval for Global Trade” campaign to recruit members was launched in November and impressed staff at the World Trade Center Arkansas, who wanted to utilize a similar idea for their membership strategy.

“Our first thought was to design something of our own, but the headline and Cara’s design were already brilliant,” said Sam Cushman, the strategic communications officer for the World Trade Center Arkansas.

“So I reached out to Graziella DiNuzzo in Philadelphia and asked to what extent her team would be willing to let us to use the campaign. She had the wonderful idea of bringing this before the Association to make the campaign assets available to all World Trade Centers.”

The assets will be available through the Resource Center on the World Trade Centers Association website. In addition to the campaign assets released by the Center in Philadelphia, the World Trade Center Arkansas will release a template for an exporter directory they are currently developing.

The directory functions as a catalogue of exporting Arkansas companies that will help them arrange business-to-business meetings with foreign buyers.
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“One of the most important jobs we have at HQ is to make sure that great ideas from around the network get shared among our Members,” said Scott Ferguson, CEO of World Trade Centers Association. “The collaboration between these two World Trade Centers on this campaign is another example of the benefits of Membership—connections that help Members grow their businesses.”

Original Article

Via The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Thursday that he would impose stiff tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, making good on a key campaign promise and rattling stock markets as the prospect of a global trade fight appeared imminent.

(You can read more about Friday’s developments here.)

In a hastily arranged meeting with industry executives that stunned many inside the West Wing, Mr. Trump said he would formally sign the trade measures next week and promised they would be in effect “for a long period of time.” The action, which came against the wishes of Mr. Trump’s pro-trade advisers, would impose tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, effectively placing a tax on every foreign shipment of those metals into the United States.

The president told more than a dozen executives that he wanted the tariffs to apply to all countries, one executive in attendance said. Mr. Trump argued that if one country was exempt, all other countries would line up to ask for similar treatment, and that metals could end up being shipped to the United States through exempted countries.

Mr. Trump’s authority to impose such sweeping tariffs stems from a Commerce Department investigation that concluded last month that imported metal threatened national security by degrading the American industrial base. The administration has said it wants to combat cheap metals flooding into the United States, particularly from China, but a broad set of tariffs would fall most heavily on allies, especially Canada, which supplies steel and aluminum to American companies as well as the military.

“People have no idea how badly our country has been treated by other countries,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday.

“They’ve destroyed the steel industry, they’ve destroyed the aluminum industry, and other industries, frankly.”

“We’re bringing it all back,” he added.

​Friday morning, Mr. Trump tweeted that a trade war would be a positive development in the context of the United States’ current position with its trading partners.

Full Article.