Customs administrations, port authorities, cargo operators, freight forwarders, and customs brokers keep global trade moving. Two forces are changing their work at the same time. Technology is changing how goods are declared, assessed and cleared. Trade policy is changing the rules they apply, from tariffs and rules of origin to sanctions, export controls, e-commerce and carbon border measures. Both are covered in fragments, spread across vendor brochures, intergovernmental reports and trade-press supplements, and few sources look at them together. The Manifest does that work. We are an independent publication for the global Customs and trade community. We follow a system from procurement to the officer’s screen, and a policy from the negotiating table to the border post, and ask what each changed in practice. We write for the people who have to make both work, with the depth they expect and the independence they need.

The editorial decisions of The Manifest rest with our editors alone. No investor, advertiser, sponsor, technology provider or government reviews or approves our coverage before publication. Sponsored content is always labelled and kept apart from editorial work. Contributors declare any commercial interest in the subjects they write about, and we correct eros openly.

The independent and trusted voice on the technology transforming the world’s borders and the trade policies governing them

We report independently and in depth on the technology and trade policy shaping Customs, ports and supply chains and the trade policies influencing them, so that the people who lead them can decide with confidence

The Manifest is led by two senior editors who have spent their careers inside the work we cover.

Raju Boddu, Editor-in-Chief, was comptroller of Customs of Antigua and Barbuda from 2012 to 2025 and has chaired the Finance Committee of the World Customs Organization. He news from the inside what it takes to run a Customs administration, modernise it and apply trade policy at the border.

Erika Medina Barrantes, Executive Editor, has led Customs modernisation and trade facilitation projects across Latin America for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the OECD and USDA. She represented Instituto Aliança Procomex in the WCO Private Sector Consultative Group and teaches trade policy and regulations at ESIC Business & Marketing School.

One has led a Customs administration and applied trade policy at the border. The other has advised governments on trade facilitation reform and teaches how trade rules are made. Together they bring both sides of the border, and both policy and practice, to every edition, with a clear and evidence-based editorial voice that informs policy, sharpens practice and opens the real conversations the sector needs to have.