Industry Activities
National Fastener Distribution Association (NFDA) held its Spring 2012 Annual Meeting and Executive Sales Planning Summit (ESPS) in early May in Braselton, GA. The three-day schedule was held in the hotel lobby, in the reception room, by the swimming pool and outdoors with a pleasant atmosphere for business talks, product demonstration, and information interchange. This is the big difference from the former annual meetings.
On the first day, NFDA invited the distinguished economic trend analyst, Alan Beaulieu, the senior economy consultant of National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW) to analyze and predict the short, medium, and long-term economic trends in the US. Beaulieu stated that this year and next year, US economy is basically good and is not as bad as some media predicted. However, it is followed by a mild recession during 2014 until another dramatic recession in 2019. People who are richer are easier to borrow money from banks. Therefore, “Get as many loans as you can!” he suggested. People can take loans to purchase real estate for investment when the US property market starts slowdown during 2014. The reason for the investment suggestion is fewer people can afford US real estate after 2025.
After the speech, new President of NFDA, Jay P. Queenin, also delivered a speech and introduced new members, followed by the writer, the representative of Taiwan Fastener Trading Association (TFTA), to deliver a congratulatory speech and report the recent industry situation in Taiwan. The writer introduced the number of TFTA members, the association, and combined market share at first and sincerely invited the NFDA members to visit the International Fastener Show which will be held by TAFA in April 2013 in Tainan, Taiwan. The writer noted in the past ten years, the unit price of products exporting to the US is consistently rising and has already been over the average unit price of products importing from the US. As such, it is shown that there is no dumping situation. Therefore, imposing the anti-dumping duty is not fair to Taiwan. In addition, regarding the US import value, Taiwan and China together have taken 55% of the total in the recent four years. Once the anti-dumping duty is imposed, the import cost of the US importers will rise sharply. What’s more, owing to the fact that the prices of both gas and electricity have risen recently in Taiwan and the steel price is predicted to rise in July, the prices of heat treatment and electroplating has already risen. Customers thus are suggested to place orders as soon as possible since the price of fasteners has been estimated to rise by over 5%. In the end, the writer also mentioned that companies in Taiwan provide services of making non-standard products and high value-added products to meet customers’ needs. We support fair trade. We believe reasonable competition will make business progress by leaps and bounds. Too many protections (for instance anti-dumping duty), however, will not guarantee any future development. After the speech, the writer and President of NFDA presented gifts to each other, followed by business talks and information interchange.
The second day was business talks all day long. NFDA provided a lobby for every member taking part in networking exhibition to demonstrate their catalogues and simple samples. Cooking classes and red wine & white wine tasting activities were provided as well. The information interchange ended until 10 p.m. In the third day, a golf outing was scheduled but cancelled in the end because of rain.
