About transportation and foreign trade

Cost of rail transport
This mode of transport is environmental friendly and is often used in prosperous continents like Europe. However, rail transport has inflexible schedules and may be delayed due to mechanical malfunctions. Not all regions all over the globe have a respectable rail system, which is a huge setback for remote regions.
The costs for rail transportation vary from 2 to 6 US dollarcents per ton per kilometer. This makes rail the cheaper alternative for road transportation, if a railway is available.
Cost of air transport
Using air transport for international trade is the quickest way to ensure product delivery and distribution. It is also the safest methods of transport, and you could export or import a variety of goods through this mode.
Costs for air transportation are mainly determined by the weight and partly by the distance. Single packages of 1 kg will cost around 30 to 50 USD to ship, 10 kg may be 70 to 90 USD and 100 kg may be over 400 USD, if you take the rates of carriers like Fedex and UPS. If volumes grow and especially if you can guarantee a daily stream of packages to keep the aircraft of these carriers occupied, then prices may drop drastically.
Customs regulations
You must also equip your goods with proper labeling and documents for legal purposes. Key is to classify your products with the right HS code, which determines the way customs handles it an also the import tariffs. Custom procedures and the number of forms needed vary per country: to get your goods into Singapore 4 documents will do, for Thailand you will need 10.
Having a local agent or distributor who also take care of the import can be essential for smooths business operations.
Source: Rodrigue, J-P (2012) “Supply Chain Management, Logistics Changes and the Concept of Friction”, in P.V. Hall and M. Hesse (eds) Cities, Regions and Flows, London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-68219-0.
International trade is based on the notion of exchange which involves what is being traded, the partners involved as well as the transactional environment in which trade takes place, namely custom procedures (tariff and non-tariff barriers). International trade is seen as a