If your business is like any other, the past three weeks have probably been some of the hardest in your company’s life cycle. You have spent the majority of your time monitoring stay-at-home orders, managing and caring for employees, reassuring nervous customers, adapting to a remote work environment, and, most importantly, taking care of family.
In these unsettling times, it is easy and understandable to allow your international expansion strategy to lie dormant. Resist that temptation. Covid-19 is guaranteed to have a significant impact in the short-term, but at some point soon, business will return to a relative state of normalcy and the international market will be flooded with demand for goods and services that were delayed or unavailable altogether during this pandemic.
Prepare for that resurgence of opportunity now. Classify your products and/or services under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and Export Administration Regulations. Develop a comprehensive export licensing strategy. Conduct due diligence on potential partners, representatives, brokers, and vendors. Implement a compliance program that contemplates overseas expansion. Train your employees on the myriad rules and regulations with which they will need to be familiar once you expand abroad. If you have been putting of a voluntary disclosure to the U.S. government of an inadvertent violation that will hobble your ability to grow post-pandemic, then do so.
Fluet’s International Trade + Transactions team is here to help. We are working as hard as we ever were to ensure that our clients’ international strategies stay on track and, over the next few weeks, we will be offering complimentary initial consultations on your specific overseas objectives and the legal challenges that stand in your way. Contact us and, in the meantime, stay healthy and safe.
