The Evolution of Global Trade Management

Back then the work sat with specialists: an import specialist checking duty exposure, an export compliance specialist checking licenses against Bureau of Industry and Security rules. Point solutions handled one problem each, total landed cost among them. Today total landed cost visibility is table stakes for any GTM solution, because every party to a cross-border transaction carries exposure, not only the importer of record or the exporter of record.

Neither speaker treats AI as a substitute for expertise. Domain knowledge still decides whether an AI agent produces a defensible classification or an audit finding, which is why the e2open global trade management suite pairs automation with current trade content across due diligence screening, customs filing, and duty management.

A beneficial cargo owner is the company that owns the goods being shipped and takes delivery of them, rather than the freight forwarder or broker moving the cargo on its behalf. Freight forwarding teams use the term where trade compliance teams have historically said “shipper” or “importer.” Hardenburgh explains in the episode why the BCO market pulled WiseTech Global from the operating system of logistics toward the operating system for trade and logistics. 

What is total landed cost and why does it matter? 

Total landed cost is the full delivered cost of an imported good: unit price plus freight, insurance, duties, taxes, brokerage, and any other fees incurred before the buyer takes possession. It matters because sourcing and pricing decisions made on unit price alone can reverse once duty and tax land. Global trade management software calculates landed cost up front using current duty rates and trade agreement eligibility, so procurement and finance teams compare true delivered cost across lanes and suppliers. 

Why do buyers get surprised by duties and taxes on imports? 

Duties and taxes apply at the border rather than at the point of purchase, so a quoted price often excludes them. Hardenburgh describes an early landed cost project involving a laptop that shipped from Texas to São Paulo, where the buyer discovered a substantial duty and tax bill only on final delivery. Calculating and disclosing total landed cost at the point of order removes that surprise, which is why the capability became a baseline requirement for any GTM solution. 

How do you automate restricted party screening at scale? 

Automated restricted party screening connects customer, supplier, and partner master data to a continuously updated set of global denied and restricted party lists, then screens records and transactions as they change instead of in periodic manual reviews. Fuzzy matching and transliteration handle name variants across alphabets, and workflow routes only genuine potential matches to a compliance analyst. e2open supports this through due diligence screening, backed by the Global Knowledge trade content database. 

What skills do trade compliance professionals need in the AI era? 

Domain expertise remains the foundation: classification logic, export controls compliance, license determination, and the regulatory reasoning behind each decision. What changes is the need to direct AI tools rather than compete with them, which means understanding what the available models and agents do well, where they fail, and how to review their output. Hardenburgh’s advice in the episode is to start with education and hands-on practice, because AI operating without domain knowledge produces confident answers that will not survive an audit.