#trade-finance
Instruments that fund and de-risk international trade, including letters of credit, documentary collections, and export credit insurance
A confirmed LC adds a second bank's payment promise; a standby LC guarantees open-account terms instead. Choose by order size, route risk, and tenor.
Export Express lends to $500,000, EWCP and International Trade Loans to $5 million — all with a 90% SBA guaranty. Match the program to your order.
CBP reconciliation lets importers flag entries with undetermined value or FTA claims and true them up on Entry Type 09: 12 months for FTA, 21 for value.
A letter of credit makes the importer's bank promise payment against shipping documents; a confirmed credit adds your home bank's guarantee on top.
CAPE Phase 3 opened October 6 for IEEPA refunds on finally liquidated entries; U.S. importers face 10-12.5% Section 301 duties and wider Section 232 tariffs.
Match the payment method to each deal — cash in advance, LC, documentary collection, or insured open account — so one default never wipes out your margin.
Supply chain finance pays suppliers in days at the buyer's credit rate: a 1.2% fee for 85 days early is about 5.2% APR. Negotiate the base term, not the fee.
Under Incoterms 2020, DDP is the only rule where the seller pays import duties — under EXW, DAP, and every other term, the buyer absorbs each tariff change. This guide maps how each term allocates duty risk, why suppliers are shifting from DDP to DAP, and how to capitalize duties into landed cost under ASC 330.
A U.S. continuous customs bond must be at least $50,000 or 10% of the prior year's duties, taxes, and fees, whichever is greater, while a single-entry bond equals shipment value plus estimated duties and fees. This guide shows where the break-even falls (about four entries a year), why ocean freight needs a separate ISF bond, and how to book duties, MPF, HMF, and bond premiums as landed cost.
A Foreign Trade Zone defers duties until goods enter U.S. commerce, consolidates a week of shipments into a single Merchandise Processing Fee (capped at $651.50 for FY 2026 rather than charged per entry), and — with FTZ Board authorization — lets you elect the lower finished-good rate when component tariffs are inverted. Small importers reach all three as users of a 3PL magnet site, without activating a zone of their own.
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism entered its definitive phase on January 1, 2026, requiring EU importers of steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizer, hydrogen, and electricity to buy CBAM certificates priced to the roughly €60-€95 per tonne EU ETS carbon rate, with costs and paperwork increasingly passed back to small US exporters who can't supply verified emissions data.
Dynamic discounting lets a small supplier trade a sliding, per-invoice discount for immediate payment from the buyer's own cash — no loan, no bank middleman — on platforms like C2FO and SAP Taulia. This guide explains how it differs from supply chain finance, why a 2/10 net 30 discount annualizes to roughly 36%, and how to record the discount as its own expense account in a plain-text ledger.
