{"id":6458,"date":"2012-04-11T13:08:01","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T19:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=6458"},"modified":"2012-04-23T11:35:52","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T17:35:52","slug":"qa-with-statesmans-rocky-barker-governors-china-trip-worth-the-tax-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/04\/11\/qa-with-statesmans-rocky-barker-governors-china-trip-worth-the-tax-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"Q&A With Statesman’s Rocky Barker: Governor’s China Trip Worth The Tax Dollars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Idaho Statesman<\/p>

Rocky Barker is a reporter for the Idaho Statesman<\/p><\/div>\n

Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and Idaho commerce and business officials are preparing for their week-long trip to China.\u00a0 The trade mission takes off this Saturday.<\/p>\n

This year’s trip to China comes two years after Gov. Otter lead a similar mission there, with the aim of creating direct investment opportunities for wealthy Chinese in Idaho.\u00a0 The 2010 trip ended up being steeped in controversy after right-wing bloggers asserted <\/a>these direct investments threatened Idaho’s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The governor rejected such claims.\u00a0 But this trip, the message has changed.\u00a0 Gov. Otter is going to China to sell Idaho goods and services, not solicit direct investments.<\/p>\n

Idaho Statesman<\/em> reporter Rocky Barker attended the 2010 trade mission and has written extensively about the trip and Idaho-China relations<\/a> over the last couple of years.\u00a0 Barker isn’t going along this time, but says regardless of political rancor, the trip is a worthy mission for Idaho’s economy.<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Governor Otter, all of our governors have done these trade missions for years.\u00a0 They\u2019re traditionally missions to sell Idaho goods.\u00a0 So, we\u2019ve been going to China for quite a while.\u00a0 Selling particularly agricultural goods, it\u2019s been a big market for us.\u00a0 And of course Micron has a big factory, a big presence over there.\u00a0 What was different two years ago though, we were in the depths of the recession, the Legislature hadn\u2019t given Idaho, or the governor any money to promote Idaho.\u00a0 Banks weren\u2019t giving money to Idaho companies.\u00a0 So, as a part then, of Project 60<\/a>, the governor was trying to get foreign investment in a variety of different ways.<\/p>\n

So the mission in 2010, at least part of it was designed to attract Chinese investment.\u00a0 This time around, he\u2019s just simply “selling groceries”, as he says.\u00a0 That just means they\u2019re going to have 16 companies, those companies basically on a trade mission, the way Gov. Otter does it.\u00a0 He goes to the companies and says, \u2018what is it you need\u2019?\u00a0 And he basically meets their needs, that\u2019s his goal.\u00a0 There might be some goals around the side, but he\u2019s primarily there for the people who go on the mission.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>How does having an elected official, a governor, on the trip help Idaho companies?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Particularly in Asia, remember this is a country whose government actually owns many of the businesses, so a person in government is very important.\u00a0 Frankly, if you have a governor with you, you open doors.\u00a0 The last meeting we went on, we had several wonderful state dinners with important people like the governor of Guangdong Province, his foreign minister, the head of the top minister of the commerce ministry in Beijing.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t have had those meetings without the governor along.\u00a0 Now, for at least one of the businesses that was on the trip, that was very important.\u00a0 Melaleuca<\/a>, who is also on the trip this year, they have a business that depends on direct sales. The government in China looks very carefully on direct sales.\u00a0 Having Butch along helps them get into areas that they likely wouldn\u2019t have gotten into without him.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>How can you quantify if a trip was successful?\u00a0 You reported the trip will cost the state of Idaho, taxpayers, between $18,000 and $19,000 this year.<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>They have a stock line.\u00a0 ‘It\u2019s really hard to tell, you can\u2019t really tell from the sales that come directly on a mission’.\u00a0 And I think that\u2019s probably true.\u00a0 But I do think you do lay groundwork on what companies should be able to say \u2018hey I\u2019m making more money because I went on this mission and I had the governor along and therefore we had more exports.\u2019\u00a0 Actually since 2010, China exports have gone down<\/a>\u2013 like 10 percent \u2013 it was pretty significant at a time when all the rest of our exports were going up.<\/p>\n

“If $18,000 or $19,000 is all they paid, and I\u2019m not sure that includes agriculture, even if it\u2019s double that, it\u2019s still a bargain for the state to have its presence known across China.”<\/div><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have the money this year to go, so I didn\u2019t really push it.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think they really wanted me to go again, in part because of the backlash.\u00a0 I wrote a lot of stuff in 2010, and I think Idahoans saw more about this process than they ever had before.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that\u2019s bad, except for people who are skeptical of government doing anything.\u00a0 If $18,000 or $19,000 is all they paid, and I\u2019m not sure that includes agriculture, even if it\u2019s double that, it\u2019s still a bargain for the state to have its presence known across China.<\/p>\n

Last trip, one thing I\u2019ll remember their newspaper had a full page of stories about Idaho that day.\u00a0 There had been a bunch of Chinese journalists here before the trip.\u00a0 There were two or three other governors in town, and here\u2019s Idaho getting this big feature.\u00a0 You can\u2019t beat that.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it, we\u2019re trying to sell.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Were you surprised at any of the businesses going on this year’s trade mission?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>No, they\u2019re traditional companies.\u00a0 What there weren\u2019t as many of this time were food companies.\u00a0 Part of the reason, from what the agriculture department told me, is that the timing of the mission was off.\u00a0 They wanted to get the mission done before China goes on vacation in May.\u00a0 They wanted to get this done in April, which isn\u2019t necessarily a good time for ag businesses.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Idaho’s top export to China is tech goods, things like memory chips, how does that affect the way ag producers sell their products?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>It’s interesting to see how you do business in China.\u00a0 You don\u2019t just go over there and sell stuff.\u00a0 You have to go over there with a long term plan.\u00a0 For instance, \u00a0the last mission Idaho Timber Corporation was there.\u00a0 They had no agenda. \u00a0They were checking things out, trying to figure out how they fit in.\u00a0 they did some business in China, but they weren\u2019t there trying to sell.\u00a0 This time, they\u2019ve got two other companies, you\u2019re pretty much trying to get yourself in the door and lay the groundwork for a long term effort.\u00a0 Simplot for instance, I wrote about this two years ago, Simplot went to China and actually set up an entire potato industry in China.\u00a0 They had to start it from the ground up; growing potatoes, the French fries plant. This was first to serve McDonald\u2019s in China, but it also laid the groundwork to sell fresh potatoes.\u00a0 They had to do all of that, or they wouldn\u2019t have been able to sell fresh potatoes.\u00a0 They were able to convince Chinese companies that they were the people you wanted to do business with.\u00a0 They\u2019ve beat out French companies because they took the long haul.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>Will any companies come home with contracts signed, deals made?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>That\u2019s not usually the process.\u00a0 I think the last time around, Melaleuca in particular made some deals about places they could go to, that they weren\u2019t able to go before.\u00a0 I spoke with a couple of companies from north Idaho who actually got some contracts the last time around.\u00a0 But then the wheat commission was there on a much longer term effort.\u00a0 They don\u2019t buy a lot of wheat from Idaho, not as much as we\u2019d like them to buy.\u00a0 The wheat commission and Butch were trying to convince them, ‘if you bought wheat and store it in Idaho you don\u2019t have to grow wheat in China.\u00a0 You can grow other things, you don\u2019t have to worry about starvation.\u00a0 We\u2019re here for you.\u00a0 You can depend on us.’\u00a0 For potatoes, one of the things they were doing is going into big stores like Wal-Mart and trying to convince people that frozen potatoes are good for you.\u00a0 Because they have smaller refrigerators, they were trying to help people how to store things over a longer period of time.<\/p>\n

Where those folks say, \u2018is this the proper role of government?\u2019, well, when you\u2019re a company, sure you can go do it all yourself, but it is in the interest of the state to help companies, particularly on those kind of things, of trying to set up a system for companies to be able to do commerce.\u00a0 Making sure people can get loans, making sure that when people come to Idaho that they\u2019re going to be able to work through the system, and the same growing the other direction to China.\u00a0 When you have a governor along, in particular, he gets you through the door, in places that you wouldn\u2019t be able to get before.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and shortened.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and Idaho commerce and business officials are preparing for their week-long trip to China.\u00a0 The trade mission takes off this Saturday. This year’s trip to China comes two years after Gov. Otter lead a similar mission there, with the aim of creating direct investment opportunities for wealthy Chinese in Idaho.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":6494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[49,27,35,157,135],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6458"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6803,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458\/revisions\/6803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}