Six months into the Biden Administration and international trade has largely been out of the headlines. President Biden’s trade policies so far have been defined more by what he has not done (lift any of the tariffs imposed by President Trump) than what he has done. Although the handful of Biden’s trade policies stylistically reflect
In yesterday’s post (How To Succeed When Taking Your Company Overseas) I briefly mentioned one of the most common problems companies face when going international: having a foreign entity when you do not really need one (and relatedly, having the wrong type of foreign entity, which I will discuss in a future post). This mistake
I recently had lunch with Jared Van Orden and Devin Taylor, friends who are foreign exchange experts with GPS Capital Markets. I like learning from experts like Devin and Jared because they make me a better resource for my clients. When I get smarter, my clients benefit, and when my professional network grows, my clients
Many of our lawyers and staff attended international schools or are sons or daughters of teachers or professors. I spent my junior year of high school at Robert College in Istanbul, a year studying Spanish at LAE Madrid and Taronja Spanish School in Valencia, Spain (both are excellent, BTW) and 8 months studying French at the
I wrote the below article many years ago with Gregory Buyoff, a good friend, a brilliant international IP lawyer, and the most knowledgeable person I’ve ever known on Vietnam history. Intellectual Property Magazine published this article, but it no longer shows up on its website so I am running it here (with a few updates),
In my last post regarding PPE, I discussed the normalization of the Chinese N95 mask market, the increasing insanity of the Malaysian nitrile glove market, and other market forces at work, including limitations based on shipping container shortages and financing troubles. In this post I will provide some additional insights our international PPE lawyers have
I am currently organizing a webinar on PPE transactions with my colleagues in the Florida Bar International Law Section, which will feature Dan Harris as a panelist. As we finalized the agenda, one of my co-organizers observed that fraud overshadowed every other agenda item. Not only do I agree, but this provides the best framework
Are Your International Contracts Built to Fail? With the diversification of supply chains, businesses more often must navigate countries with unpredictable legal systems. This post explains how to create strong contracts for countries with weak contract enforcement. Three Common International Contract Mistakes Over-reliance on Arbitration: Arbitration in a neutral country often does not provide the
I recently spoke with an in-house IP lawyer at a high-tech hardware client that does business all over the world, mostly in emerging market countries with weak intellectual property rights and protections, including China. When it comes to protecting their IP, this company employs what he calls a “Swiss Army Knife approach,” meaning they do
Operating overseas is always difficult. Companies that start out in a new country rarely know the culture or the laws or the rules or the people that can be the deciders between success and failure. It is of course possible to bring in good people who know all of these things, but that can be
