Sign Banking Word Montana Myself

Industry sign banking montana word myself

hello and welcome to another edition of global positioning today we're at the HC TV studio in Helena and with me from Missoula is the executive director of the Montana World Trade Center mr. Arnie Sherman are any thanks for making the voyage across the past as we say I'm going to presume that many of our viewers are not familiar already with the work of the Montana World Trade Center so let's begin with just a brief overview of of its purpose and function relationship to the University of my sure the Montana World Trade Center is part of a network of more than 300 world trade centers in 80 countries in many places around the world is the most identifiable building in in the capital city or in a major city the license for the Montana World Trade Center is uniquely held by the University of Montana so that's why the the center is domiciled on the University campus and we essentially do two things we help companies figure out where among the 200 or so countries in the world they ought to be selling their products or services or expanding their business of authority international and for many other companies and for the state in general we work on global economic development activities like trade missions and trade education and other kinds of activities that that will lead to increasing our capability to be competitive in the global market yeah are you affiliated in any way with the business school or do you have a lot of interaction with the business weirdo myself at the business school at the University of Montana we we have a commitment to experiential education we have a number of students in fact in my tenure in my almost 15 years we've had almost 200 students that have interned at the World Trade Center and never done you know serious work for businesses in Montana that are trying to research new markets find partners find distributors find agents find suppliers and and students play a very important role at the Trade Center in supporting that work yeah so we know that Montana is dominated by the small business sector you know we are small business States there's some large industries from growing industries but it's mostly small businesses right and from what I've gathered from listening to them and reading about it moving from your small business and you want to move into the international market you're going to need a lot of professional assistance do they do businesses come to you and hire you to consult with them or how does the relationship between you and and firms well two things usually happen one is is there's an event or activity going on in the life of the business where they're confronted with some daunting issue that's emerged they've never shipped to to Latin America a buyer from the Middle East is wanting to buy that product and they don't have to engage in that financial transaction some precipitating events going on and they are seeking out help and they go to the state or they they generally find the way to the World Trade Center or some of the other resources the US commercial service department of commerce the governor's office to us others offer you know offer advice and guidance and support and that sort of thing often we see opportunities that are out there and we go to businesses ourselves and say look we've just come back from China we've been in Brazil wherein we hear about or see opportunities we talk to companies about trying to meet that challenge to meet that opportunity yeah well before the program begun we were talking briefly about what was to me a big surprise might not be a surprise to a lot of people that Montana is a major-league producer of lentils a legume nutritious delicious leg you might happen to eat levels I didn't know we grew so many but you have been exploring and the expansion of a market opportunity in India where lentils are almost a staple product there's so much of curry dishes based on lentils how did how did you make that connection what's the driven by people in the industry who know about it you know beans and peas and chickpeas and and other lentils you know we're grown in Montana there's an appetite for them globally India's particular where they don't their protein isn't supplemented as much as ours by meat beef and the department of agriculture in the state and the US Department of Agriculture you know support expanding our export opportunities in Montana this past year has planted four hundred and forty thousand acres of lands I think it's only second to a North Dakota in the amount of acreage being planted and it's a good alternative crop for for a sort of so see putting sequential planting going on it it restores nitrogen to the to the land and it's a growing industry in a big industry from Montana which will affect other industries the more we grow and more we export the more we're going to transport the more we're going to need container cars and other ways to move goods around it leads to lots of other job creation yeah well with other earlier guests from china and taiwan on this program we've talked a lot about the export of wheat and even in other directions the export of beef sure going to Russia and places like that you know you look at montana's position on the map of North America and then look at it on the globe we don't seem to be very well advantaged with respect to trading with the rest of the world we're totally disadvantage yeah I mean you know we're kind of isolated and remote and there's a lot of distance that these products have to move to get to the marketplace describe for example how lentils I think you kind of intimate it already how are these lentils grown out in the fields of north-central Montana finding their way to India truck to rail rail to the Pacific Northwest ports you know cross the Pacific Ocean to to Europe we are disadvantaged if you draw 150 mile circle around almost any town city in Montana there was a smaller population based in that radius in any place else in the world you can draw on your 50 mile circle really believe it or not and so we are challenged we have a project right now in fact we're working on on a transportation project to see if there's alternatives off to decrease cost of transportation to move goods globally and increase our competitiveness we're sort of captive shippers in Montana for particularly containerized cargo and goods we mostly ship by almost exclusively by truck we do not have regularly a regular container cargo service by rail in the state of Montana it's the only state of 50 states that doesn't have that so working to try to see what we can do with the transportation providers and governmental agencies and others Republican private sector to come up with a vehicle transportation intermodal capability that will allow us to have other alternatives beside truck to move cargo yeah and I was just thinking that the volatility in the in the petrol markets you know the price of oil makes a big difference with respect to the total cost of getting product from Montana to wherever it's going and who bears the cost of transportation also aware that buyer it's ultimately the seller because he has to be competitive yeah you mentioned petrol I just saw for the first time in and I don't know how many decades the US this year will be a net exporter of petroleum products not importer real it's really interesting when you start looking at global trends and that's why you can't make any generalizations about you know my tan is small and can't compete this past five years Montana exports have doubled and during that time period from 2005 to 2010 we went from 1 billion to 2 billion dollars of exports half of which was finished goods which was which was not agricultural products and only one of the state which was Idaho doubled their their exports during that same time period right now the majority of our exports are are they still going to Canada the most proximate marker Canada's Canada's big Japan Korea was China's growing EU is growing it depends in a state this small when you're only exporting two billion one big new producer in the state one change in lentils or organic wheat or or a production of beef one country changes its its import structure related to Montana beef and you'd see a dramatic change in what country we would be shipping to organic wheat wheat products you know going off to Indonesia and Malaysia for example yeah Russia shuts off or puts a high tariffs on wood products to China and they're coming to the United States and they're coming to Montana to export would you know we're trying to export coal from Montana a couple years ago we looked at Israel as an interesting market export call they wanted to buy us gold they have very very stringent requirements about the kind of coal they wanted to receive Korea doesn't have the same kind of stringent requirements we're starting to export Montana call to Korea so those kinds of things can change when you're only dealing with you know in the global sense of things in 16 trillion dollars worth of global trade 2 billion dollars one big deal or one big change could make a significant difference and who our markets are ya now clearly from what the way you describe this your kind of running an intelligence organization of a sort at the World Trade Center I mean you've got to keep tabs on so many factors in the global economy do you want to just say a couple words about your methodology howdy how do you keep track of the world and and sift through mountains of information and data for the salient material that you can apply here in this well we network with lots of other organizations who do that we keep a core there are four or five students every semester we work with us that do research our member companies we have maybe a hundred companies we're working with on an ongoing basis they give us feedback the US commercial service the State Department of Commerce is looking at things and we we we know what we have I mean when when you when it's all said and done they're probably only three or four hundred companies entire state that export at this point in time yeah we know we have and as we're looking at what's going on we see where is there you know where is there an opportunity just like when we're talking about trade missions we're looking to go to you know India the summer probably our next trade mission is going to be to Europe lots of time and discussion China India and other places grab the headlines because they're new and there's lots going on there but your European Union and it's 27 member countries is the oldest trading partner with the United States collectively between EU and the United States it's forty percent of mobile trade well you know it's and it's about forty percent of the global economy and so you're all friends are good friends the EU collectively is the world's largest economy you know it's a bunch of two countries as we know only seven different countries and they still have their nation states or nations with States and all that but when they operate as a union they are the largest and while we're on that subject you know a lot of us are kind of riveted by the situation in the EU today I mean there's still a kind of an ongoing crisis with the euro the currency that they adopted some time ago right out without signing on to some seriously enforceable agreements on fiscal policy so things are out of whack right to oversimplify I mean you got that mean that's I mean it you've oversimplified it but that's the core of the issue they have a common currency but not a common fiscal or monetary policy and so countries like Greece and others can can go off kilter in terms of attracting and we're an accumulating national debt and establishing internally domestically poor economic policies which affect the rest of the Union yeah so imagine you're watching that closely do you have a sense I'm asking you to predict any particular outcome but it seems like the French and the Germans who are sort of at the core of the EU are managing to kind of muddle through a crisis but there's lots of information coming daily where data from in from Spain and Italy in other countries sort of indicates that this is not a not a sustainable model that there's a lot of big decisions you have to be made do you have a sense of foreboding or of confidence that they'll figure this out and thus we in the United States are not going to suffer a huge ripple right a little bit that they're our largest trading partner we should be concerned about what happens there we had the EU ambassador of the United States in missoula in November and who spoke on this issue and said you know encouraging words about what's happening I'm not an economist by training of course but I read what's out in the you know public press and if you look at what the International Monetary Fund to the World Bank or others say they say that there's prob a period of further economic degradation that's going to take place before everybody figures out how to overcome this you know the United States has been muddling through a situation I have great confidence in the long run that things will work out and that some needed changes among these 27 countries I mean remember you got not only 27 countries you got 27 legal systems you have 20 you know eight governments because you have the EU government it you know it is a very complex matter to try to get all of them to you know to resolve problems that that may be in their mutual benefit in total but on an individual basis certain decisions will impact individual countries negatively so it's a hard thing it's a hard thing to move along but ultimately over time I think it will resolve itself in this great opportunity for American companies to be selling products and services into into Europe and and accepting their investment into the United States they see us as a safe haven yeah I think that might be the great hope of the United States actually is for all the problems we have that we've created for ourselves and problems that are visited upon us from abroad it's still seemingly the place where the rule of law is still at work business law is well established mean nobody's going to steal stuff from you I mean asyla stay away fast they get away lets them get away with it yeah I shouldn't get into this area but that's what I i see is is is is large and convoluted our fiscal and monetary problems are on a comparative basis it's still the safest place sure for people with capital to invest Lobel economy is probably going to grow three or three and a half percent you know in total if you're looking at the whole picture over the next few years there may be a little down swoop a couple years from now charge