By SEMA Washington, D.C., Staff

President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico if it does not adequately deter asylum-seeking Central American migrants from crossing the U.S. southern border. The tariffs would begin at 5% on June 10 and increase 5% each following month until reaching 25% by October 1.  The White House has not defined the levels of migration remedies necessary to preclude tariffs.

The tariff announcement was a surprise because Mexico and Canada had just reached agreement with the United States allowing the removal of 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs on May 20. That action had raised prospects that the U.S. Congress could pass legislation this summer approving the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to replace NAFTA, which seeks to establish a predictable application of tariffs.  

The president’s authority to unilaterally impose tariffs that are seemingly unrelated to immigration may increase the chance that Congress will consider passing legislation to limit presidential authority. President Trump invoked a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which has been used to apply sanctions or freeze assets directly tied to national security threats but has never been used as a justification to impose tariffs. In reacting to the Mexican tariff threat, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee stated, “This is a misuse of presidential tariff authority and counter to congressional intent.” Pending legislation would require Congressional approval of tariffs or allow Congress to overturn tariffs that have been imposed.  

President Trump’s tariff threat also undermines current negotiations with China, Europe and Japan since the goal is to provide certainty in how trade agreements are to be applied in practice. It remains unclear whether tariffs on Mexican goods will begin on June 10 or be delayed or abandoned pending discussions with Mexican government officials. 

For more information, contact Stuart Gosswein at stuartg@sema.org.

By SEMA Washington, D.C., Staff

President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico if it does not adequately deter asylum-seeking Central American migrants from crossing the U.S. southern border. The tariffs would begin at 5% on June 10 and increase 5% each following month until reaching 25% by October 1.  The White House has not defined the levels of migration remedies necessary to preclude tariffs.

The tariff announcement was a surprise because Mexico and Canada had just reached agreement with the United States allowing the removal of 25% steel and 10% aluminum tariffs on May 20. That action had raised prospects that the U.S. Congress could pass legislation this summer approving the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to replace NAFTA, which seeks to establish a predictable application of tariffs.  

The president’s authority to unilaterally impose tariffs that are seemingly unrelated to immigration may increase the chance that Congress will consider passing legislation to limit presidential authority. President Trump invoked a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which has been used to apply sanctions or freeze assets directly tied to national security threats but has never been used as a justification to impose tariffs. In reacting to the Mexican tariff threat, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee stated, “This is a misuse of presidential tariff authority and counter to congressional intent.” Pending legislation would require Congressional approval of tariffs or allow Congress to overturn tariffs that have been imposed.  

President Trump’s tariff threat also undermines current negotiations with China, Europe and Japan since the goal is to provide certainty in how trade agreements are to be applied in practice. It remains unclear whether tariffs on Mexican goods will begin on June 10 or be delayed or abandoned pending discussions with Mexican government officials. 

For more information, contact Stuart Gosswein at stuartg@sema.org.

By SEMA Editors

Latest Jobs Added to SEMA Career Center

Are you hunting for a new job? The SEMA Career Center has a comprehensive listing of automotive-related job openings around the country. Here are some of the latest jobs posted to the website.

Motorsports Manager: Canepa is hiring a motorsports manager responsible for forecasting parts and labor on projects, ensuring and maintaining customer satisfaction and assigning work orders. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of completing projects, prioritizing and meeting deadlines; mechanical and automotive experience with race cars; and knowledge of fabrication, welding and machining.

Operations and Logistics Manager: Piston Driven LLC is hiring an operations and logistics manager responsible for short- and long-term operations and logistics, including maintaining and preparing a combination of 10 trucks and trailers for 8–10 shows per year. Candidates must have the ability to keep equipment, the warehouse and assets exceptionally clean and control the receiving and organization of merchandise pre- and post-show. Forklift experience and basic computer skills are required.

Sales Manager: King Engine Bearings is hiring a sales manager who has the drive and initiative to devise and deliver the company’s long-term market-share ambitions with customers across North America. Reporting to the executive vice president, the position is responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of all of King Engine Bearings products. Travel is required, and qualified applicants should have a background in market development and sales experience in the automotive aftermarket, engine parts and racing industry.

Compiled by SEMA Editors

Andy McMillin was the overall winner of the SCORE Baja 500.

51st Annual SCORE Baja 500 Results

Andy McMillin was the overall winner in Round 2 of the four-race 2019 SCORE World Desert Championship, June 1–2, in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, with an elapsed time of 9:49:12:113. The 485.02-mile race featured 245 total starters from 26 U.S. states, Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Spain and Venezuela, of which 144 finished. For full race results, visit the SCORE website.

Wheelwell Launches Program to Showcase Motorsports Vehicles

Formula DRIFT is teaming up with Wheelwell to give fans of the series a deeper look into the vehicles of their favorite drivers. It also offers the drivers a stage to showcase the sponsored products they use for their cars, from wheels and tires to custom fabricated control arms and body panels. Wheelwell provides fans with similar vehicles the opportunity to get ideas on how to modify theirs to perform like their favorite drivers.

For more racing news, visit Performance Racing Industry’s (PRI) website. 

Attendee registration is for distributors, retailers, installers, PR/marketing staff and buyers who will meet with exhibitors. Applicants may be required to submit proof of industry employment. Approved domestic attendees registered prior to October 11 will receive their badges in the mail.

Attendee registration is for distributors, retailers, installers, PR/marketing staff and buyers who will meet with exhibitors. Applicants may be required to submit proof of industry employment. Approved domestic attendees registered prior to October 11 will receive their badges in the mail.

SEMA-member companies have posted several new listings for job opportunities in the Classifieds page of SEMA.org.

SEMA News—June 2019

INTERNET

By Joe Dysart

9 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Work For You

Scores of software companies are powering their latest productivity apps with AI, including Microsoft.

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being applied on a massive scale to alter the very nature of how the world works, it turns out AI is also very good at making everyday drudgery disappear.

Productivity apps powered by AI are emerging, for example, that will help you come up with snappier and more personalized emails, transcribe all your phone calls into searchable text or find just the right photo that goes with the color scheme you’re using for your presentation.

And while most of us are well-acquainted with everyday apps designed to help us work more efficiently, the best of the new incarnations powered by AI have been programmed to learn over time and become ever-smarter at the everyday tasks they’re handling for you.

The latest search tool for Microsoft Office, for example, goes far beyond searching for things that you’re looking for and actually gets to know how you work. The idea: The better the program “knows” you, the better search results it can bring back to you.

“Based on the user’s work patterns, the new search tool makes suggestions on content you may be looking for, actions you can take, and people you might want to connect with—all made to happen using machine learning and Microsoft artificial intelligence,” says Jon Friedman, chief designer, Microsoft Office.

In a phrase, scores of productivity tools are currently being completely remade by AI.

It’s a great time for businesses to take a look at what’s out there, and where the software category is headed.

Here’s a representative sampling:

Personalize Your Emails With an AI Web Crawler: Aizimov (www.aizimov.com) adds a personal touch to your emails by auto-crawling the web for interesting insights on the people your do
business with.

“All you have to put in are four things: first name, last name, email and company,” says Jerome Devosse, Aizimov’s CEO. After that, the software searches Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks to bring back insights about your contacts, including their likes, dislikes and passions.

“If the guy, for example, has done a marathon, I may finish the email by saying, “By the way, I also did a marathon in Rome, here’s my time—how do we compare?” to get their attention,” Devosse says.

Aizomov also works for you after you send your email, collecting info on the types of emails you send that get the best responses, based on tone, length, content and time-of-day sent.

Using these insights, it will put together a draft of an email the next time you want to communicate with your marathon buddy or similar—which you can use as is or customize to your own tastes.

Leverage Microsoft Office’s New AI (https://products.office.com): Stop One for millions of computer users each day, Microsoft Office has been given an AI facelift. It will now automatically transcribe your conference calls into text and even organize that text with automatic
subtitles.

Businesses who use Powerpoint will also appreciate the new Powerpoint-on-AI, which can automatically put together a presentation after you type a line or two of text over each slide you plan to use.

Still other Microsoft Office apps reworked with AI include it’s search function, which is completely powered by AI now. And Cortana, an AI assistant that made its debut in Microsoft Windows 10, has also been integrated into Microsoft Office as another AI-powered app.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is also attempting to make machine learning more accessible to analysts within companies by offering them the ability to write their own machine learning models—without writing a single line of computer code.

The capability was recently integrated into Microsoft’s “Power BI,” a business analytics tool that scans company data for hidden patterns and renders the results into easily understandable reports and visualizations.

“Instead of targeting developers or data scientists, we’ve simplified it and made it broadly accessible for common use cases,” says Arun Ulag, general manager, engineering, at Microsoft. “This means that when an analyst builds a machine learning model in Power BI, it does all the heavy lifting by selecting the best algorithm and features with just a few clicks.

“As an example: a business analyst could leverage the automated machine learning technology to quickly and easily build a model to predict how likely an open sales opportunity is to be won. This could help a sales manager prioritize which high value opportunities to focus on and how likely they are to meet their target.”

Auto-Transcribe Meetings to Text: Eva, Voicea’s AI assistant (www.voicea.com) automatically transcribes the highlights of any meeting into easily readable text for all participants. The app also will email all the notes to everyone who attended the meeting, or just key players.

Plus, its auto-transcription also works for phone conversations.

Send Out for an AI Rewrite: Businesses looking for a different take on some text they’ve just written can turn to Spinnerchief (www.spinnerchief.com). It will rework anything you write from a slightly different perspective. The software has also been designed to ensure the text it produces is optimized for the search engines.

Another AI program in the same genre is Writer (www.ai-writer.com). Writer is designed to learn everything you need to know about a specific topic by crawling the Web and then present the results to you in a text article. The program works best when you instruct it to research an extremely narrow topic.

Index Your Photo Library With AI: Imagga (https://imagga.com) is able to analyze the entire photo library of a business, studying one picture at a time at blazingly fast speed and then tagging each image so you’ll be able to quickly call up any image with a text search.

Find Images for Your Color Theme: Everypixel (www.everypixel.com) bests the other stock images libraries on the Web by offering you the ability to find an image based on the color scheme you’re using for your ad or presentation.

Have an AI Assistant Schedule Your Meetings: There are a number of AI assistants dedicated to using email to auto-schedule meetings for businesses using email. Those worth a try include Julie Desk (www.juliedesk.com), Kono (https://kono.ai), Clara (https://claralabs.com) and Hire Amy (https://x.ai).

Pick an AI Personal Assistant to Your Liking: Unlike task-specific AI apps, AI personal assistants attempt to handle a number of everyday tasks for you simultaneously. It’s a popular AI productivity category, so you’ll have plenty to check out.

Zoom.AI (https://zoom.ai), for example, is designed to help organize your schedule, prepare meeting notes, handle travel logistics, search for files, order a car and more. Braina (www.brainasoft.com) is designed to perform similar functions, as is Vesper (www.vesper.ai/#home).

Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.

646-233-4089

joe@joedysart.com

www.joedysart.com

SEMA News—June 2019

INTERNET

By Joe Dysart

9 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Work For You

Scores of software companies are powering their latest productivity apps with AI, including Microsoft.

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being applied on a massive scale to alter the very nature of how the world works, it turns out AI is also very good at making everyday drudgery disappear.

Productivity apps powered by AI are emerging, for example, that will help you come up with snappier and more personalized emails, transcribe all your phone calls into searchable text or find just the right photo that goes with the color scheme you’re using for your presentation.

And while most of us are well-acquainted with everyday apps designed to help us work more efficiently, the best of the new incarnations powered by AI have been programmed to learn over time and become ever-smarter at the everyday tasks they’re handling for you.

The latest search tool for Microsoft Office, for example, goes far beyond searching for things that you’re looking for and actually gets to know how you work. The idea: The better the program “knows” you, the better search results it can bring back to you.

“Based on the user’s work patterns, the new search tool makes suggestions on content you may be looking for, actions you can take, and people you might want to connect with—all made to happen using machine learning and Microsoft artificial intelligence,” says Jon Friedman, chief designer, Microsoft Office.

In a phrase, scores of productivity tools are currently being completely remade by AI.

It’s a great time for businesses to take a look at what’s out there, and where the software category is headed.

Here’s a representative sampling:

Personalize Your Emails With an AI Web Crawler: Aizimov (www.aizimov.com) adds a personal touch to your emails by auto-crawling the web for interesting insights on the people your do
business with.

“All you have to put in are four things: first name, last name, email and company,” says Jerome Devosse, Aizimov’s CEO. After that, the software searches Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks to bring back insights about your contacts, including their likes, dislikes and passions.

“If the guy, for example, has done a marathon, I may finish the email by saying, “By the way, I also did a marathon in Rome, here’s my time—how do we compare?” to get their attention,” Devosse says.

Aizomov also works for you after you send your email, collecting info on the types of emails you send that get the best responses, based on tone, length, content and time-of-day sent.

Using these insights, it will put together a draft of an email the next time you want to communicate with your marathon buddy or similar—which you can use as is or customize to your own tastes.

Leverage Microsoft Office’s New AI (https://products.office.com): Stop One for millions of computer users each day, Microsoft Office has been given an AI facelift. It will now automatically transcribe your conference calls into text and even organize that text with automatic
subtitles.

Businesses who use Powerpoint will also appreciate the new Powerpoint-on-AI, which can automatically put together a presentation after you type a line or two of text over each slide you plan to use.

Still other Microsoft Office apps reworked with AI include it’s search function, which is completely powered by AI now. And Cortana, an AI assistant that made its debut in Microsoft Windows 10, has also been integrated into Microsoft Office as another AI-powered app.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is also attempting to make machine learning more accessible to analysts within companies by offering them the ability to write their own machine learning models—without writing a single line of computer code.

The capability was recently integrated into Microsoft’s “Power BI,” a business analytics tool that scans company data for hidden patterns and renders the results into easily understandable reports and visualizations.

“Instead of targeting developers or data scientists, we’ve simplified it and made it broadly accessible for common use cases,” says Arun Ulag, general manager, engineering, at Microsoft. “This means that when an analyst builds a machine learning model in Power BI, it does all the heavy lifting by selecting the best algorithm and features with just a few clicks.

“As an example: a business analyst could leverage the automated machine learning technology to quickly and easily build a model to predict how likely an open sales opportunity is to be won. This could help a sales manager prioritize which high value opportunities to focus on and how likely they are to meet their target.”

Auto-Transcribe Meetings to Text: Eva, Voicea’s AI assistant (www.voicea.com) automatically transcribes the highlights of any meeting into easily readable text for all participants. The app also will email all the notes to everyone who attended the meeting, or just key players.

Plus, its auto-transcription also works for phone conversations.

Send Out for an AI Rewrite: Businesses looking for a different take on some text they’ve just written can turn to Spinnerchief (www.spinnerchief.com). It will rework anything you write from a slightly different perspective. The software has also been designed to ensure the text it produces is optimized for the search engines.

Another AI program in the same genre is Writer (www.ai-writer.com). Writer is designed to learn everything you need to know about a specific topic by crawling the Web and then present the results to you in a text article. The program works best when you instruct it to research an extremely narrow topic.

Index Your Photo Library With AI: Imagga (https://imagga.com) is able to analyze the entire photo library of a business, studying one picture at a time at blazingly fast speed and then tagging each image so you’ll be able to quickly call up any image with a text search.

Find Images for Your Color Theme: Everypixel (www.everypixel.com) bests the other stock images libraries on the Web by offering you the ability to find an image based on the color scheme you’re using for your ad or presentation.

Have an AI Assistant Schedule Your Meetings: There are a number of AI assistants dedicated to using email to auto-schedule meetings for businesses using email. Those worth a try include Julie Desk (www.juliedesk.com), Kono (https://kono.ai), Clara (https://claralabs.com) and Hire Amy (https://x.ai).

Pick an AI Personal Assistant to Your Liking: Unlike task-specific AI apps, AI personal assistants attempt to handle a number of everyday tasks for you simultaneously. It’s a popular AI productivity category, so you’ll have plenty to check out.

Zoom.AI (https://zoom.ai), for example, is designed to help organize your schedule, prepare meeting notes, handle travel logistics, search for files, order a car and more. Braina (www.brainasoft.com) is designed to perform similar functions, as is Vesper (www.vesper.ai/#home).

Joe Dysart is an internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.

646-233-4089

joe@joedysart.com

www.joedysart.com