International Trade Expert to Discuss Pilot Program for South American Perishable Imports at Port Everglades Meeting Aug. 6

A pilot program to bring South American grapes and blueberries into South Florida seaports will be the topic of the Port Everglades quarterly meeting for perishable goods import handlers on August 6. The guest speaker will be Lee Sandler, an international trade attorney and representative of the Florida Perishables Trade Coalition. The quarterly meeting will be take place Tuesday, August 6 at 10:30 a.m. at the Port Everglades Administration Building, 1850 Eller Drive, Fort Lauderdale, and is co-hosted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Broward County’s Port Everglades. Currently, grapes and blueberries are first brought into the United States from Peru and Uruguay through North Atlantic seaports. State and federal agencies are working diligently on defining a viable pilot program that would begin in October 2013. If the pilot program is proven successful, it could be expanded to include other produce. Sandler, founder of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, PA, has extensive experience in handling complex international trade, intellectual property and litigation projects for clients including importers, exporters, manufacturers, bonded warehouses, foreign-trade zones, customs brokers, freight forwarders, carriers, financial institutions and surety companies. Sandler has been appointed by five administrations to advise the U.S. government on international trade negotiations, including the Uruguay and Doha rounds, free trade agreement negotiations, the Customs Valuation Agreement, the Harmonized Tariff Classification Agreement and the Kyoto Convention. He has served on the Advisory Committee on Customs Commercial Operations, where he played a leading role in the committee’s work on the development of the Department of Homeland Security and on security programs such as the Container Security Initiative and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. The Florida Perishables Trade Coalition, which Sandler represents, is a non-profit association formed in January 2012 to focus the collective experience and efforts of trade, transportation and port leaders from throughout the state to increase trade in perishable products through Florida’s airports and seaports. The Coalition identifies the issues that challenge the growth of perishables trade through Florida ports and airports, and works to provide solutions to meet those challenges in order to maintain and grow the ability of Florida to compete in the global perishable trade marketplace. At this time, the major Coalition priority is to allow Florida ports to handle the many fresh fruit products grown in South America and Central America, which Florida is currently prohibited from receiving under federal cold-treatment requirements. Members include: airports, seaports, freight forwarders, Customs brokers, terminal operators, carriers and fumigators. About Port Everglades At the crossroads of North-South and East-West trade, Port Everglades is one of the nation’s leading container ports, handling nearly one million TEUs annually and serving as a gateway to Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Port Everglades has direct access to the interstate highway system and the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) intermodal hub, and is closer to the Atlantic Shipping Lanes than any other Southeastern U.S. port. Ongoing capital improvements and expansion will ensure that Port Everglades can continue to handle future growth in container traffic. A world-class cargo handling facility, Port Everglades serves as an ideal point of entry and departure for products shipped around the world. More information about Broward County’s Port Everglades is available online at porteverglades.net, by calling toll-free in the United States 1-800-421-0188 or emailingPortEvergladesCargo@broward.org.