“There are two things that give out a person involved in foreign trade” – they always remember a Foreign Trade Code and always look for alternative payment mechanisms.”

          Ekaterina Smolovaya, Partner, Head of the CLS Tax practice

On March 4 in St. Petersburg at the Nevesomost restaurant in the Vvedensky hotel, a business breakfast took place titled “Trends in foreign trade in 2025: Challenges and prospects. A practical view by participants of the logistics and legal industry,” an event organized jointly by CLS and Canavara Group. At the event, experts discussed the key trends and risks of foreign trade in 2025. The business breakfast was attended by representatives of banks, importers and exporters, logistics companies and owners of businesses aiming to work on international markets.

Speaking at the event were Ekaterina Smolovaya, Partner, Head of the CLS Tax practice, Anna Sotnikova, Associate of the CLS Tax practice, Andrey Serebryakov, Deputy General Director for client work at Canavara Group and Yulia Antropova, General Director of TSV. They discussed a broad range of issues concerning tax and customs risks, adaptation of logistics to the new reality, classification of goods and the advantages of working with an authorized economical operator.

Ekaterina Smolovaya spoke at the first session:

“Planning foreign trade activities and resolving the relevant issues has in the last few years literally become a fundamental existential issue for many companies. The issue has become all the more prominent since the controlling authorities have been directing more and more of their attention at businesses. At this business breakfast, we talked in detail about the main issues in foreign trade, including customs declaration issues, tax consequences and risks, as well as payment mechanisms that actually work.”

Anna Sotnikova at the fourth session gave a presentation titled “Recent trends and risks in goods classification.” She gave many details on matters concerning goods classification disputes and noted some working strategies for defending against claims.

The other sessions were conducted by Andrey Serebryakov and Yulia Antropova. They spoke on the topics of “Building an adaptive logistics system while under current restrictions” and “Authorized economical operator as an element for simplifying customs procedures.”

Thanks to the discussion of real cases, participants received not only the latest information, but also practical recommendations as to decreasing their foreign trade risks. After the official segment was completed, a live discussion ensued and the participants talked about some of the problems their companies encounter during the onset of a tax audit and asked their own questions of interest.