As questions swirl around the Trump administration’s seemingly never-ending tariff changes, PCB Global Trade Management has the answers.
PCB Global Trade Management is a brand that consists of three companies: Pacific Customs Brokers Inc., a U.S. customs broker; Pacific Customs Brokers Ltd., a Canadian customs broker; and PCB Freight Management Ltd., a freight company.
Pacific Customs Brokers (PCB) helps individual people or businesses ensure the goods they are shipping are compliant with federal regulations. PCB Global Trade Management president and CEO Greg Timm said now is a time of real uncertainty for international trade.
“Especially now in this trade climate we’re in, it can be very intimidating to commercially import your goods,” said Timm.
Timm said one of the biggest challenges he’s seen clients face recently is battling the unknown of constantly changing tariffs.
“Every time there’s a change or a new announcement, we get flooded with calls from our clients and people that are not yet our clients to say, ‘How did this change in duty or tariff affect me?’” he said.
There was previously more leniency with small errors, Timm said. However, this has changed over the past 20 years, with a dramatic shift within the last year.
Recent trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada have made accurate product classification much more important for clients, Timm said. Proper classification can result in higher duties under new trade measures, and if products are not classified correctly, the government sees it as a revenue loss.
“We really now advise clients to pay the professional to get proper information prior to shipping,” Timm said. “It’s not like asking for forgiveness instead of approval. It’s now the other way around. Ask for approval and make sure you’ve got it right before anything ships.”
In total, PCB Global Trade Management has around 300 employees, with around 55 people working in U.S. operations. It has two main offices, one in Canada and one in Blaine, where the company moved into its new building at 2150 Peace Portal Drive in December 2023.
In addition to these, it also has some smaller office spaces to house any remote workers that do not work from home.
PCB’s roots go back over a century. In 1956, Pacific Customs Brokers Ltd. took over Dennison & Raines Ltd., a customs brokerage established in 1916. At the time, PCB was owned by several Vancouver customs brokers, including the founder, Jack Todd.
Over the years, the other co-owners left or were bought out, which left the Todd family as the sole owners of PCB. PCB Inc., the U.S. brokerage, was established in Blaine on December 5, 1999.
PCB Global Trade Management prides itself on being open 24/7 for clients.
“We do not do voicemail because our opinion is that when your truck is meeting at customs or your airplane is landing in a Chicago airport, you don’t want to go to a voicemail and not be sure when you will get called back,” Timm said.
While PCB assists clients with a range of goods, Timm said it often deals with food and nursery stock. He also said the company aims to work with clients quickly to ensure they feel supported in their importing and exporting needs.
“We try to do business like we have through our history,” Timm said. “We still understand that we do not do business between companies, we do business person to person within a company.”
