Tuesday, 30 July 2019
7:30 AM — 6:00 PM
Registration
Location: Gran Salon Foyer
9:00 — 9:15 AM
Welcome Remarks
Location: Gran Salon
Hugh Morley
Senior Editor,
US Northeast and Mexico,
JOC, Maritime & Trade,
IHS Markit
9:15 — 10:00 AM
Keynote Address
Location: Gran Salon
Introduction
Hugh Morley
Senior Editor,
US Northeast and Mexico,
JOC, Maritime & Trade,
IHS Markit
Keynote Speaker
Morten Moller Weisdal
Managing Director,
Mexico and Central America,
MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co.
10:00 — 11:00 AM
Market Outlook:
Analyzing the Economic and Shipping Landscape
Location: Gran Salon
Mexico’s 8.7 percent growth in cargo volumes in 2018 outpaced that of the US (4.5 percent) and Canada (4.8 percent), with Mexico’s top four ports — Manzanillo, Lazaro Cardenas, Veracruz, and Altamira — seeing especially strong increases. The four ports were among the fastest growing in the JOC’s Top 25 North American port ranking. Yet the Mexican economy is stumbling, with IHS Markit expecting GDP growth of just 1.6 percent this year, in a forecast clouded by concerns about security and lack of clarity on whether President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) policies will be business friendly. The port cargo growth is fueled in part by domestic consumption, and the US economy, with strong demand for Mexican products boosting imports of raw materials and parts to be made into finished goods for export. Ocean carriers face a port system that will be enhanced by the opening of a major new terminal at the Port of Veracruz, and relative fluidity at the ports, but difficulties inland, with tight trucking capacity pushing up rates and concerns over rail reliability after the teachers blockade in January shut down two main lines. This panel will take a wide-ranging look at the key factors shaping the Mexican economy in 2019, and how they affect ocean carriers bringing imports and exports into and out of the country.
Session Chair
Mark Szakonyi
Executive Editor,
JOC.com and
The Journal of Commerce,
Maritime & Trade,
IHS Markit
Panelist
Paul Bingham
Director,
Transportation Consulting,
Economics and Country Risk,
IHS Markit
Panelist
Reto Malfatti
Managing Director,
Mexico,
Kuehne + Nagel
Panelist
Patricia Perez Salazar
General Manager,
Mexico,
Sealand
11:30 AM — 12:30 PM
US-Mexico Trade:
Is There Hope for Harmony?
Location: Gran Salon
Session Chair
Carlos Pascual
Senior Vice President,
Global Energy
IHS Markit
Mexico and the US each find themselves led by a populist heads of state with ambitions to reshape their countries, albeit working from different ends of the political spectrum. Even before the election of President Andre Manuel Obrador Lopez (AMLO), US President Donald Trump’s policies had triggered conflict with Mexico around trade, including the renegotiation of — and threat of to abandon — the North American Free Trade Agreement, border crossing and immigration issues, and tariffs over steel. Yet there are also signs that Mexico could become a manufacturer of choice for an increasing number of shippers, who are unnerved by the US-China trade war and would prefer a more reliable sourcing location. Key to the US-Mexico trade relationship will be whether the proposed US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) passes all three countries’ legislatures and how it works if it does. This panel will look at the key issues facing the US-Mexico relationship, what impact the arrival of AMLO and the USMCA will have on the trading environment, and what shippers are looking for in Mexico’s logistics environment.
Panelist
Juan Antonio Dorantes
Partner,
Aguilar y Loera,
S.C.
Panelist
Jeffrey G. Weiss
Partner,
International Trade Group, Venable
12:30 — 1:30 PM
Customs Reform:
What Do Shippers Need and Want
Location: Gran Salon
Session Chair
Hugh Morley
Senior Editor,
US Northeast and Mexico,
JOC, Maritime & Trade
IHS Markit
Panelist
Fernando Ramos Casas
Owner, Borderless Consulting Group,and Founding Partner,Radar Customs & Logistics
Panelist
Carlos E Ortega Garcia
Carlos E Ortega Garcia, Director, Traffic and Imports, Axo Group
Panelist
Jorge Magno Lecona Murillo
Head of Innovaton,
Hutchison Ports Mexico
Panelist
Maria Elena Sierra
Operations Manager,
Grupo Prodensa
Panelist
Luca Winters
General Manager,
Transportation,
C.H. Robinson
Shippers say the passage of cargo through customs is often the biggest challenge to their supply chain. They find it a lengthy, uncertain and confusing process in which the outcome is invariably difficult to predict. Ricardo Peralta Saucedo, Mexico’s administrator general de customs, has launched a review of the process that he says will fight corruption and provide sweeping reforms.This panel will look at shippers’ underlying issues and concerns in moving their cargo through the customs and what needs to be done to improve the passage.
2:30 — 3:30 PM
Crisis at the Border:
Planning for Disruption
Location: Gran Salon
Session Chair
William Cassidy
Senior Editor,
Trucking,
JOC, Maritime & Trade,
IHS Markit
Panelist
Diego Anchustegui
Director,
Operations,
Transportes EASO
Panelist
Miguel Gomez Tapia
Co-CEO,
Fletes Mexico
Panelist
David Henry
Regional Manager,
Mexico,
GlobalTranz
Panelist
Humberto Vargas
President, Mexican Association of Intermodal Transport (AMTI), and Associate Director, Mexico Intermodal, Werner Enterprises
The recent spate of lengthy lines at border crossing points from Mexico into the US, with truckers waiting for hours to cross, offered further proof of the sensitivity of cross-border supply chains. This time, delays were due to the shift of customs officers from cargo inspection stations to immigration responsibilities, a trend that shows no signs of abating. Yet equipment shortages, customs issues, and tight trucking capacity are just some of the challenges shippers routinely face when moving goods across the border. Approximately $1.7 billion worth of goods cross into the US from Mexico every day, according to the US Chamber of Commerce, and nearly 70 percent of those goods move by truck, US Bureau of Transportation Statistics data show. The inspection process for intermodal cargo is smoother, but the trip by rail is longer. That’s prompted a growing number of shippers to try moving their goods by ship from Mexican Gulf Coast ports through Florida and into the US, in a bid to avoid the congestion. Still, that represents a tiny portion of growing cross-border traffic. More than 6.3 million trucks crossed the border in 2018, a 4.5 percent increase over 2017, fueled by a strong US economy and American consumers’ demand for more goods. This panel will explore the difficulties confronted by shippers whose supply chains stretch across the US-Mexican border, and the ways in which they confront and resolve them.
3:30 — 4:00 PM
Networking Break
Location: Gran Salon Foyer
4:00 — 5:00 PM
View From the Top:
A Roundtable Discussion With Industry Leaders
Location: Gran Salon
Session Chair
Carlos Pascual
Senior Vice President,
Global Energy,
IHS Markit
Mexico appears on the cusp of being a key regional cargo hub, with a thriving logistics, manufacturing, and transportation sector that sits next to the world’s largest consumer market. At some point, however, Mexico has to rise up, shrug off the doubts that some have about its performance, and be recognized as a solid and undeniable leader in the region. That will take leadership across the board, managerial skills, and extensive collaboration. This panel of top industry leaders will look at the main issues facing their sector, how they can be overcome, and what needs to be done for Mexico to reach its potential as a regional — even global — logistics hub. They will look at how these factors are different from the past, how they will play out in the future, and what key changes they would like to see.
Panelist
Enrique Gonzalez
President,
CANACAR
Panelist
Hector Lopez Gutierrez
General Coordinator, Ports and Merchant Marine
Secretariat of Communications and Transportation
Panelist
Alexandra Loboda
Managing Director,
Mexico and Middle America,
Maersk Line
Panelist
Flavio Rivera
President and Director General,
Daimler Commercial Vehicles Mexico
5:00 — 5:30 PM
Standardization and Digitization:
A view of the Future from TradeLens
Location: Gran Salon
Speaker Introduction
Peter Tirschwell
Vice President,
Maritime & Trade,
IHS Markit
Featured Speaker
Juan Ruiz
Head of Strategy and Business Development, TradeLens.
IBM Industry Platforms
STATEMENT OF JOC CONFERENCE EDITORIAL POLICY: All JOC conference programs are developed independently by the JOC editorial team based on input from a wide variety of industry experts and the editors' own industry knowledge, contacts and experience. The editorial team determines session topics and extends all speaker invitations based entirely on the goal of providing highly relevant content for conference attendees. Certain sponsors may give welcoming remarks or introduce certain sessions, but if a sponsor appears as a bona-fide speaker it will be because of an editorial invitation, not as a benefit of sponsorship. Sponsorship benefits do not include speaking on a program.