Sam Kaplan is the director of the Center of Excellence for Global Trade and Supply Chain Management located at Highline College. The Center works with education and industry throughout Washington on workforce development issues. Previously, Sam ran the Trade Development Alliance connecting Seattle-area businesses with international opportunities, worked on foreign affairs issues for a U.S. Representative and publishes the weekly e-newsletter, International Need to Know.

Given Seattle’s strategic position as a real gateway from Asia and also located so close to the Canadian border (as we are in MI), Sam talks about how tightly its economy is tied into the world’s. The current pandemic has really forced us to consider the global relationships that we take for granted in terms of supply chain as well as how we interact with the world more generally.

Here, Jade and Sam discuss moving forward both as a society and in terms of global trade in the short and medium terms.