The Transition of E-commerce from Consumer to Capital Goods in Global Trade -Part I
- William Laraque, Managing Director at US-International Trade Services
- 09.08.2016 03:30 pm undisclosed
As an endless line of MRAPS and tanks left Iraq, George Will made a memorable comment. "We can't rebuild Detroit, he said, "how were we to rebuild Iraq?"
Yesterday, Donald Trump unveiled in Detroit, his economic plan to rebuild America (the US). I leave it to the US people, the polity, to determine whether Trump's plan has any value. In the meantime, I will describe what I perceive as the basis for Round II in US dominance of global trade. As Joe Biden said recently, "we own the finish line."
As Yogi Berra said, "If you don't know where you're going, you might never get there." I therefore decided to describe what "there" looks like.
A Little History
Jean-Jacques Servan Schreiber, the commander on Juin's lead tank as Paris was liberated, wrote "Le Defi Americain," (The American Challenge) at a time when US multinationals dominated global trade.
The French did not liberate Paris from the Nazis alone. Eisenhower assigned a portion of the extraordinary forces at his command, to Juin, facilitating the liberation of the "City of Light." When I visited the Musee de L'Arme, in Paris, I saw little mention of the role of the US in Normandy, in the liberation of Paris.
Will history remember the US role in freeing the Iraqi people from their demon, their demons?
Attacking on a Different Front
The US will again dominate global trade. It will be different this time. This time, the Internet will play a big role and as Eric Schmidt of Google keeps telling us, the Internet is a tool of liberation, of democratization, of egalitarianism.
e-commerce does Capital Goods
The financing of capital goods is becoming an important aspect of e-commerce. It represents the coming of age, the state of the art of a process previously devoted to financing a national and now multinational trade in consumer goods. I don't expect bankers, even trade finance specialists, to understand much less imagine how this transition from financing consumer goods to that of financing capital goods with e-commerce will occur. I have always counted on the lack of vision and imagination of my colleagues in trade finance, in order to be a superstar in the field.
The Infrastructure
After the allies invaded Normandy and as the endless flights of bombers and fighters, the endless lines of tanks, APCs and trucks, filled the roads heading towards Germany, a Wehrmacht officer who had surrendered looked in bemusement at the awesome productive capacity of US democracy and declared; "we were supposed to win against this?"
The Internet is now the basis for a new onslaught. This is the e-commerce empowerment of US productive capacity and invention in global trade. The infrastructure has been laid. The ICC has written the rule books. SWIFT has arranged for "four corner interoperability in which banks play a major role. The entrepreneur can now utilize the full leverage of the Internet to participate, to engage in global trade. With e-commerce, the lead entrepreneurial troops have crossed the FEBA, the forward edge of the battle area. Now the supporting arms must be brought forward to provide the full complement of support for those who have assaulted the beachhead. Recon has marked the beach. Land the Landing Force!
