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Home / Washington Business - March/April 2007 / Q&A with Bill Stafford: Bringing down barriers crucial to international commerce |
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Q&A with Bill Stafford: Bringing down barriers crucial to international commerce |
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Written On: March/April 2007 |
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A transplanted New Yorker with an MBA from Columbia University, Bill Stafford has been president of the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle for the past 15 years. Prior to that, he served as deputy mayor of Seattle.
Q: What is the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle, and what does it do?
A: This organization was formed 15 years ago. It was the brainchild of George Duff, president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, who looked at globalization and knew we needed to make some changes for the future. He had a study done—paid for by the business community—about who was doing what, and came to the conclusion from the study that no one was promoting this region’s international economic interests. He realized a partnership was needed, and started discussions with the Port of Seattle. After the Port of Seattle and the Chamber decided to partner, they invited the City of Seattle to join in.
Fast forward 15 years to today, the partnership is composed of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties; the cities of Everett and Seattle; and it looks like Bellevue may be coming in shortly. The business community is represented by the chamber, we have organized labor and we have all three ports: Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. All the major interests—except the City of Tacoma, which we hope will be in shortly—are at the table. We also have ex officio membership for two community college systems, the University of Washington and some of the state trade agencies. So, it’s really a big political partnership representing this region’s international economic interests.
Q: How did you become involved with trade development issues?
A: It started with getting an MBA in marketing from Columbia. Except for five years with the Ford Motor Co., this is one of the first times I’ve actually used it. I was actually deputy mayor of Seattle. After I left Ford, I was with the city. I was in charge of external affairs for three mayors: Wes Uhlman, Charles Royer and Norm Rice.
When George Duff was putting together the Trade Development Alliance, because of the complicated political partnership, he felt the first director of this organization should have some political skills in terms of managing between business, government, education, and labor. The international skills were less important to him. I remember he said that if a person was good at the politics of Singapore, but he wasn’t good at the politics of Seattle, he wouldn’t survive the job. So, he was looking for someone to help put this together and institutionalize it. My background was working with the corporate community and the government. I also had a degree in marketing and an undergrad in economics, and I had done international programs with sister cities for Seattle.
I represented the city. I learned my portfolio before that, and most of my time was spent on national relations for the city, state relations for the governor and the Legislature, and metropolitan relations—the external world of a large city and the urban issues. Also, I had a sister city program because Seattle has an extensive sister city program. We now have 21 sister cities for the City of Seattle alone.
Q: How does globalization affect Seattle?
A: Of all the metropolitan areas in the United States, particularly ones our size, this region—and it is a metropolitan regional economy—is probably as impacted as any because, in terms of the business sector, you’ve got Boeing with 80 percent of their new planes being sold overseas, Microsoft with more than 60 percent of its software being sold abroad, and Starbucks opening up around the globe. So, many of the companies that make products are selling a large piece of what they do overseas. You’ve got service companies. You’ve got two of the 10 largest architectural companies in the United States here. They’re doing extensive work overseas. The banks and law firms have major international practices. You’ve also got international students in this state. It’s an over $200 million business each year in international education. You’ve got international tourists who come here. We’re one of the major logistics centers with the ports of Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. We’re the second or third largest load center in the United States. You’ve got SeaTac airport. You’ve got a lot of international investment here. A number of our companies are owned from Europe or Asia. Across the full spectrum, we are as engaged in the international economy here as probably any other place in the United States.
We had a speech from one of our bankers one time called "Boeing, Bankers and Barbershops" and he said, "You know why Boeing cares about the international economy, and you know why a banker would care about world capital flows, but why would a barber care? Well, if one in three of our jobs are tied to the international economy, then one in three people sitting in that barber’s chair are also tied to the international economy." So, it’s really everybody. It’s not just the assembly line worker at Boeing, but it’s everybody who’s engaged.
Q: What are the advantages of barrier-free international commerce?
A: If everybody plays by the rules, there are a lot of advantages because there are 193 countries in the world, and if each one of those countries were to have separate agreements with each other, it would be a complicated world in which small and mid-sized companies would have a terrible time working their way through what the various regulations are country by country by country. A free trade agreement simplifies things.
Q: What do you think we need to do to attract more people to come here from other countries as students and tourists?
A: As a country, we’ve got to get the visa issue straightened out and make it seem like this is a friendly country to visit. It’s getting so complicated that other countries and tourist destinations are using the complications of coming to the United States to attract people to countries like France or Germany, which have a simpler process. As far as this region goes, I think the student issue is just critical. We see this on trips.
We were just in India. We met with the head of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce and told him we’d like to be able do a program with him. He said he’d do a program with us because he was a Husky and the vice chairman was a Cougar. So, here we are in India with one of the major business organizations, and the chairman, who is the head of a company, and the vice chairman, who’s the senior guy in a very big company, both have relations with our state. In the United Arab Emirates, in Dubai, the largest builder is a Seattle University graduate, and one of the big chaebol heads in Korea is a Husky. These people who come here as students and spend time here before going back home can also be business partners and investors. It’s a terrific way to build relationships, and it’s also a terrific way for students who are at our colleges and universities to meet people from around the world to get a better understanding about international cultures.
As far as international tourism goes, we have certain assets here in terms of environmental tourism and the outdoors. We don’t have the destination tourism of a Disneyland or something like that, and for some of the Europeans, we don’t have beaches with palm trees and 80-degree temperatures, but international tourism is still important here. Japan is a key generator of international tourism in Washington, and so are some of the European countries where people like to hike and ski. We have a great opportunity coming up in a few years with the 2010 Olympics. Gov. Gregoire, Mayor Nickels and others are all looking at how we can capitalize on the Olympics.
The main problem is we’re not really well known. There are disadvantages to having a state named Washington. It isn’t always the easiest thing to promote. Some people confuse it with Washington, D.C. I was with a Chinese delegation on the Space Needle, and they asked where the Capitol was. It’s hard when you have a name that’s also the national capital’s name.
I think this year’s budget has a bigger commitment of tourism funds. Our state, among the 50 states, has among the lowest amount of money put to tourism promotion. We’re like 45th, so we haven’t been doing much as a state. I think there’s a role for cooperative efforts between government and the business community, particularly one that’s somewhat fragmented like the tourist industry. It probably would be very valuable.
Q: Has international trade increased in importance to the Seattle over the years?
A: I think there’s been a growing recognition of the importance of the international economy, so you don’t have the situation you did 15 to 20 years ago where people didn’t realize how much of our business went out to the rest of the world. A lot of people look at the port and the ships that go out as a symbol of trade, but I think they know it’s a far broader economy.
Global competition has forced a recognition—which I think has been really valuable within this region—that the cities, the counties and the local chambers have to work together. It’s made people recognize that it’s really the metropolitan area that’s competing, not just the individual towns and cities. There’s an old Benjamin Franklin line that says, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." That’s one of the biggest changes.
Q: Where do you think globalization is headed, and how do you think it will affect Washington?
A: The head of the Federal Reserve Board gave a speech about the stagnation of wages and the economy in the last several years, and his concern that there’s going to be a growing populist reaction against free trade. I think one of the challenges is to recognize that we have to worry about the job level, keeping people employed, and having a good economic strategy for our region and our state. That connects with some of the discussions of the last several years: the whole education issue and the quality of universities, investments in the infrastructure, providing our businesses with a good base from which they can do business, and providing support—where it’s appropriate—for their international competitiveness. I think the main thing is getting our public officials to really understand what’s happening in the world and that the decisions they’re making are important.
On one hand, it’s natural to criticize public officials for not knowing what’s going on the world. But when they go out, people criticize them for going out. You can’t have it both ways. Either you have to let people see what’s going on or stop criticizing them for not knowing.
I think the challenge is going to be some of the issues within the country. We need to recognize that it’s a very competitive world, and that people do play by different rules in other parts of the world. Governments play major roles in Singapore, other parts of Asia and throughout the world. Boeing’s major competitor is a quasi-governmental agency in some ways. It gets different kinds of support to compete. Other countries have industrial policies to create or try to create industries. Airbus was created by a consortium of countries. So it’s going to be interesting to see the adjustments our region and our country will have to make to stay competitive with the rest of the world.
Our trading partners are throughout the entire world. People always think of Asia, but it’s not all Asia. Because of the technology base and our economy in biotech, IT and aerospace, our customers are in Africa, South America and in Europe. We really are a region that deals globally. Our cultural products are going overseas, too.
The Gates Foundation is putting this region in the center of the whole global health issue and putting the spotlight on this area as one of the premier centers of the world in infectious disease research. We’re really almost repositioning ourselves in the health area. It’s certainly an industry of the future, not an industry of the past. We’re all blessed that the industries we do have are future industries—aerospace, biomedical, medical, IT—and not industries that are slowly phasing out.
We develop sector brochures, and the one we’ve had the most response to was when we stopped thinking about research as supporting other industries and started looking as research as a sector in itself. When you start adding up the billion dollars at the University of Washington, the $200 million at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the money spread around other institutions in this area, you realize that research is a major industry here. We tend not to look at it that way, but it is a sector that positions this region in a very excellent way for the future.
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