Front Page	E-mail PagePrint Version

Trade promotion takes a political turn as election approaches

SAN FRANCISCO - 07/24/06 - Claiming the title role of California's "Super Salesman," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said recently that, in addition to his upcoming trade mission to Mexico, he will travel to India and Europe as part of what he called a "commitment to bring back California's economy.''

"I will go anywhere in the world to sell California products, to offer our high-tech and environmental know-how, to promote tourism, to sell our agricultural products,'' Schwarzenegger said during a speech last week at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco.
 
"Many, many deals have come from these (previous) trips," Schwarzenegger told the audience of several hundred people, that included former US Secretary of State George Shultz and California Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura.

The governor vowed to make his trade missions "bigger and better and more efficient" so they'll raise "billions of dollars for our state revenues."

According to the governor, California has reaped 600,000 new jobs during his tenure, and "we were able to reach out directly and sell products to the people'' in trips abroad to Japan and China, that he said contributed to a Japanese high-end convenience store chain's plans to open 200 stores in the state.

He also alluded to Air China's expansion of a maintenance contract at San Francisco International Airport; $18 million in Chinese wastewater-treatment-installation contracts for a Sacramento company; and the opening of China's agricultural market to California plums earlier this month.

But the governors' claims were countered by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, California's State Treasurer who will face Schwarzenegger in the upcoming November gubernatorial election.

Angelides' campaign managers issued a memo outlining what it called Schwarzenegger's foreign-trade "failures" - fewer California exports now than in 2000; no follow-through on promises to open trade promotion offices in East Asia and Mexico; and "questionable results" from costly trade missions to Japan and China.

The Angelides' campaign later issued a press release noting the Japanese convenience-store chain established a California presence two months before Schwarzenegger's trade trip to Tokyo, and that the governor "did nothing more than send brief form letters to companies involved in the wastewater-facility contracts."

Angelides has also questioned why the governor waited so long to talk business with California's largest trading partner, while some pundits have opined this trip is a sop to Latino voters.

Schwarzenegger's speech on trade came about a month before his first major trade mission to Mexico, California's largest trading partner.
 
The trip will include a contingent of 60 business leaders in areas such as agriculture, high tech, manufacturing, and tourism.

"He seems to be more interested in promoting his movies overseas and getting results for his own pocket,'' charged Angelides spokesman Steve Maviglio, former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' spokesman during Davis' trade mission to Mexico in the first 30 days of his second term.

The governor "spent a lot of time putting his face on billboards in Shanghai ... and posing with Jackie Chan'' to publicize an anti-piracy campaign for the entertainment industry, Maviglio said. "It's done absolutely nothing.''

Schwarzenegger said he has relished his job as a marketer for California products because it is similar to what he has done during his successful careers as a bodybuilder and actor.

"When it comes to selling ... I want to go out and tell our story,'' he said.
 
Schwarzenegger told the attendees he is "intensely competitive" in the role and intends to make California the nation's leader in overseas trade.

"I don't like the idea that we have slipped from sixth place to seventh place (in world economies),'' he said. "It drives me insane.''

California Secretary of Business, Transportation and Housing, Sunne Wright McPeak, disputed the Angelides campaign's criticism that Schwarzenegger's efforts on trade have been ineffective.
 
"There has been a steady increase in exports with virtually all of our major trade partners since Governor Schwarzenegger came into office,'' said McPeak.
 
"We've been rebuilding a more effective international trade program than we ever had before," she said. "You can't just talk about trade; you have to be able to move the goods. We've been smart, strategic and very focused on what we have done.''

Go back, or read the latest Front Page stories:

Korea, US Free Trade Pact ''Possible'' by Early 2007

WASHINGTON, DC – 10/25/06 – A free trade pact between the US and South Korea could become a reality by early 2007, says chief US negotiator Wendy Cutler at the opening of this week’s fourth round of talks between the two countries; since the two sides launched FTA negotiations in February they have reported little progress even though they postponed consideration of the most politically sensitive issues, such as US access to the Korean rice market.