Gregor Gregory – Gregor Gregory

India Faces Multifaceted Trade Issues in Asia and North America

Based in Hollywood, Florida, Gregor Gregory led AAUG Realty until 2009. Among his other areas of interest, former AAUG president Gregor Gregory’s spends time studying how global trade functions as a complex matrix of relationships. One example of this is the widely differing trade issues India faces with countries in Asia and North America.

In July 2023, India requested that South Korea and Japan renegotiate its longstanding free trade agreements (FTA) with them. This would address an expanding trade gap. As Trade Minister Piyush Goyal described it, India fully opened its market to the Southeast Asian nations, but the two trade partners have failed to do the same over the course of the past decade. The trade minister also characterized its agreements with ASEAN as “unfair” and “ill-conceived.”

International trade is naturally complex. In fact, the US has accused India of “playing games with global food security” in instituting a new ban on long-grain rice exports. This will increase the price of this commodity in the short term. However, in the long term, India will be able to strategically stockpile the grain and sell it on the global market at prices that will cause world rice prices to plummet. A USA Rice Federation official noted that India stockpiling rice to sell to its own people represents a closed system and is fine to subsidize, as long as that product is not dumped on world markets.

A Brief Look at Global Trade Bottlenecks

Former AAUG Realty president Gregor Gregory serves as director of Northernlight in Hollywood, Florida, where he oversees a group of businesses that provides customized surety and property insurance solutions to clients in the international construction industry. While serving as AAUG’s president, he oversaw townhouse developments and the development of land along South Florida’s waterways. Gregor Gregory’s interests include international construction and global trade practices.

The global supply chain was disrupted across multiple segments in 2022 due to inflation, the Ukraine war, political turmoil, and a shortage of resources, among other factors. The United Kingdom exited the European Union on February 1, 2020. Two years after the “Brexit” withdrawal, a protectionist trade regime was in place. Companies trading with the UK in 2022 had to navigate unique trade protocols to comply with its sophisticated Customs Declaration Service (CDS) system.

Goods exchanged between the United States and China were subject to retaliatory tariffs. In addition to the spikes in prices of goods due to the excessive tariffs, sanctions in the form of trade status denials and port closures affected the US-China supply chain.

In the Asia-Pacific region, thousands of companies faced product delays and shortages due to COVID-related lockdowns of Chinese factories and an extra layer of scrutiny against forced labor. Companies in Latin America, meanwhile, were subject to rapid changes in trade policy, which complicated trade compliance. Some business leaders in Latin America pondered the question of whether sophisticated technological solutions could streamline trade compliance.

A Look at C3 Partnerships

The former president of AAUG Realty, Gregor Gregory currently serves as the president of Northernlight Companies in Hollywood, Florida. During his time as president of AAUG, Gregor Gregory focused on land development along South Florida waterways. Outside of his professional work, Mr. Gregory has served on the board of Reciprocal Ministries International.

Since its founding in 1988, Reciprocal Ministries International (RMI) has organized mission trips and facilitated church partnerships known as C3 Partnerships. C3 Partnerships, which stand for Connected Church to Church, involve a strategic relationship between a United States church and a village church in Haiti.

Each C3 Partnership, which are all long-term in nature, receives meaningful assistance from expert staff at RMI. Assistance focuses on providing effective training and resourcing to the Haitian partner church so they can improve their outreach, and provides accountability through trained staff at the Haitian church. Each partnership also focuses on evangelism and strives to provide ministry resources and spread the word of God throughout the local community. For further information on C3 Partnerships, visit www.rmibridge.org.