1.When people ask about our target audience, we describe it as 'the New Logistician'--a term we've coined here at World Trade magazine.

The on-going transformation of manufacturing as value chains go global is similarly revamping the nature of logistics. Once removed to the loading dock, the New Logistician today is moving into the executive suite at ever-higher levels. The best companies are integrating logistics into their product developmentstrategies and marketing tactics right from the get-go, not as an after-thought. It's still about moving goods from Point A to Point B, but now the movement of those goods is critical to the entire success of the entire enterprise. World trade used to be a lot simpler. It was about 'imports and exports.' Then, during the first decade of globalization in the 1990s, it encompassed supply chain management. Now, as the trajectory of international commerce slopes ever steeper, the operative concept is 'integrated logistics.' The emphasis here is on 'integrated,' for it includes areas of concern that never before were factors in the logistics equation.

Like the 'new' trade finance, which we cover extensively in this issue, integrated logistics entails a working knowledge of how trade finance operates in the age of the Internet and in the context of ever more disciplined balance sheets. The example that Naveed Riaz, the top international trade banker at Citigroup, provides in our exclusive interview illustrates this. He describes how a giant U.S. retailer no longer provides key Asian suppliers with Letters of Credit, a development with a huge potential impact on the supply chain.