MCALLEN: Tom Coyle is a now a professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in its school of business and based in Brownsville. He helped lead the creation of a new master’s level certificate program focused on customs and international trade.Tom Coyle said when he worked in the maquiladora industry one of the biggest roadblocks to trade was navigating complex customs law.
Once, his company shipped a U.S. machine to a factory on the Texas-Mexico border.“In the process of working, a couple of components tore up and failed so we had to order spare parts,” Coyle said. “But we couldn’t order they because it turned out it was on the U.S. Department of Defense ‘do not leave the country list’ and nobody knew.”
“Both in the private sector and public sector people do not have enough education about moving goods around the world, when you get to crossing a border it’s a big to do,” he said.The four series long online course is scheduled to cover international customs law, maritime law, U.S. customs and border regulations, and compliance management.
The first class has slots for about two dozen students and half are already taken by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, he said. It’s collaboration with the Center for Customs and Excise Studies set to feature faculty from Charles Sturt University in Australia.
