
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 17, 1993                   TAG: 9312010336
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VIRGINIA'S STALL IN WORLD MARKETS

IN 1990, when Gov. Wilder eliminated Virginia's independent Department of World Trade in a budget-trimming move, some corporate executives and politicians expressed concern that it might throw into reverse the state's full-speed-ahead policies to promote global competitiveness, which Wilder's predecessor, Gerald Baliles, had put in place just three years earlier.

At the time, Wilder said not to worry. The world-trade department's mission could be carried out just as effectively within the state's Department of Economic Development, he said. Moreover, he promised to maintain the "dynamic and unrelentingly aggressive" pace Baliles had set for boosting Virginia exports and investment opportunities in foreign markets.

Now, with only three months remaining in his term, Wilder concedes that Virginia's global competitiveness has fallen behind that of several other states. It's past time, he says, for Virginia to break out of its export-and- investment doldrums overseas, to make an attitudinal adjustment away from what he labeled its "provinciality."

This is pretty much what Baliles had in mind, of course, when he set up the world-trade department, which helped oversee an export expansion of about 60 percent in three years while preaching the global-competitiveness gospel. Wilder's "amen" comes a little late.

In fairness, the separate world-trade agency seemed like something the state could do without in the budget crisis that marked the start of the Wilder administration. At the time, we defended his plan to fold its operations into the economic-development department, based on his assurances that export promotion would not suffer.

In fairness, too, Wilder can't be accused of doing nothing to push Virginia's interests abroad. He's made six overseas trade missions, including to Africa and Central America. And Richmond has made an effort to spread availability and access to information about export opportunities to businesses around the state.

Clearly, as Wilder says, Virginia's efforts have been restrained by continuing budget problems and by recessions - both at home and in other countries. But other states also have had to deal with budget problems and recessions, and their export business is perking in some foreign markets where Virginia's has grown stagnant.

The state's Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Tech says, for instance, that coal exports from Southwest Virginia grew steadily from 1988 to 1991, but dropped in 1992. In the Far East, Virginia exports, led by tobacco, tumbled from $294 million in 1989 to $174 million last year. All told, the state's record-high export business of $10.2 billion in 1991 dipped by nearly 3 percent last year.

Liberalizing trade rules and a growing global economy are the surest antidotes to these trends. And this is no brief for re-opening the world-trade department, though that is looking like a better idea. This is, however, a reminder to the next governor that Virginia's global competitiveness won't happen automatically. It can be helped along by the kind of emphasis and unfaltering commitment that former Gov. Baliles gave it.

This is also to remind that cutting budget "frills" - whether in export promotion, higher education, the transportation network or whatever - can be a detriment to Virginia's economic growth. The next governor must take care that short-term expediency not incur long-term setbacks.

by CNB