Neal Asbury Wins Exporter of the Year

I am very happy to announce that I have been named SBA’s National Champion Exporter of the year. For more information on the award visit the following links: Greenfield World Trade’s Neal Asbury Named SBA’s National Champion Greenfield World Trade’s Neal Asbury Named SBA’s National Champion Exporter of the Year WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The SBA  Read More

Exporting is My Life

When I graduated college, I knew I wanted to be in international trade, but I didn’t know how I’d fit in…So, I moved to Manhattan and got a little apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. I looked in The New York Times classifieds the first day I arrived, and went to the heading of ‘export.’ I got a job in the mailroom of a Fifth Avenue food service exporter. They kind of questioned me about whether I wanted that job, because nobody with a college degree – or whose first language was English – had ever taken it…. A year later, the entry-level move had paid off, and I was in Manila, working as director of sales for a large trading company and traveling to capitals throughout the Far East. Seven years later, I founded Asbury Worldwide. Julia Neyman of... Read More

Feds and Business Leaders Defend Trade Pacts – New York Times

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have  attacked NAFTA in their bids for the Democratic presidential nomination, blaming the 14-year-old North American free trade deal for widespread job cuts in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Federal officials and business leaders, including myself, have  dismissed the calls by the Democratic presidential candidates to renegotiate NAFTA, believing that free trade deals help American small businesses and the U.S. economy grow. The Congressional Research Service has even released several studies looking at the economic effect of NAFTA. Democratic demagoguery on NAFTA is misplaced. NAFTA is NOT to blame. I believe NAFTA  has really been the most important piece of trade legislation in the history of the United States. Many federal officials and... Read More

Let’s Get NAFTA Into The Political Debate

Unfortunately this election cycle is a huge disappointment among the current candidates from both major parties.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have cut and pasted the AFL-CIO anti-trade positions to their websites and routinely include the union’s talking points in their speeches. They tell us they are going to “fix” the evils of NAFTA or “opt out”. This is the same rhetoric the ultra-left wing Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador used against NAFTA in the 2006 Mexican election. He lost the popular vote by less than one percent. Lopez Obrador openly campaigned that it was his intention to take Mexico out of NAFTA and aligning the country closer with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and other radical leftist Latin American governments. This would have been... Read More

China: The Great Manipulator

Even as it tries to manipulate world opinion about the upcoming Olympics, China has succeeded in really manipulating the world when it comes to world trade. Let’s start by looking at some numbers. The U.S. trade deficit with China will exceed $200 billion in 2005. This is up from $162 billion in 2004 and $135 billion in 2003. If we exclude our crude oil imports, China represents 42% of our overall trade deficit. In fact we spend more importing all kinds of “stuff” from China than we do on our entire crude oil imports world wide. You don’t have to go far to see the impact. Over 70% of the merchandise Wal-Mart sells has China content. Although Wal-Mart will not release the official figure, they will import approximately $20 billion from China this year. If Wal-Mart were a country it would... Read More

“The World Is Flat?” No, The World is Tilted

I recently gave a presentation to the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce in association with the U.S. Southern Command, Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami, Florida International University, and Miami Free Zone at their “Americas Intelligence Briefing Series” on China’s Role in the Americas. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times asserts in his best selling book on globalization, “The World is Flat,” that the world has become smaller and “flatter” due to the rapid advancement of Information Technology. If something can be digitized, says Friedman, it can be zipped around the world in nanoseconds allowing workers from low cost countries such as China and India to replace workers from industrialized countries at a fraction of the expense. Friedman stresses this... Read More

Introduction and Welcome from Author, Neal Asbury

Welcome and thank you for visiting my new Asbury’s World blog.  I’m Neal Asbury and have been involved in global business since graduating from Roirdan State University in New Jersey in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.  In 1981, I moved to Asia representing the interests of a number of U.S. manufacturers at that time throughout the region. Six years later, I founded Asbury WorldWide which became the largest American Export Management Company in its segment, with twelve distribution facilities around the globe.  In 1989, I started FAB Asia, Inc. in Manila, Philippines, which was the exclusive Asian fabricator of commercial kitchens for McDonalds as well as other well-known American chains. In July of 1999, I sold my group of companies and established Greenfield World... Read More