Suitor-States Court Asian Business
Like suitors vying for the favor of the most eligible belles in town, California, Oregon and Washington are eagerly wooing Pacific Rim companies, with the dowry coming in economic growth and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
By 1984, foreign companies had employed more than 327,000 residents in these three West Coast States, according to U.S. Department of Commerce statistics. Japan alone accounted for more than 53,000 jobs in California, a 25% increase over 1982; in the same period, the number of jobs created by Japanese-owned concerns almost doubled in Washington state, to about 4,700.
Economists believe that the figures for the past two years, when they become available, will reflect another investment surge as the yen’s appreciation makes it cheaper to do business here. In addition, goods produced by a U.S.-based Japanese company are not subject to trade tariffs.
“A lot may be establishing footholds (in the United States) to protect themselves from any protectionist measures that might be passed by legislatures or by Congress,” said Janet Turner, deputy director of California’s Office of Economic Research.
With so much at stake, West Coast states compete not only with each other but with the rest of the country as well. Washington, Oregon and California have learned that a natural geographic advantage goes only so far; it takes hard work to keep their edge working for them.
Stiff Competition
“It becomes very, very intense,” said John Anderson, director of Washington’s Department of Trade and Economic Development and leader of the state’s “Team Washington” economic development group. “It’s a tough, tough competitive sort of a business.”
Booming Pacific Rim investment has pumped new strength into sagging state economies, helped fill voids left by slumps in such industries as timber and sometimes picked up the pieces of another company’s shutdown.
In December, 1984, Toyota and General Motors began production at their joint venture, New United Motors Manufacturing in Fremont, Calif. The plant, closed by GM in 1982, now employs 2,500 auto workers who produce about 750 Chevrolet Novas and Toyota FXs a day.
California, an economic giant that is Japan’s largest trading partner next to the United States itself, might seem to have an advantage over its smaller northern neighbors. However, Oregon and Washington are savvy and aggressive, and competition from them and such states as New York, North Carolina and Tennessee is hot and heavy.
Recognition of that prompted the Golden State this year to reopen trade offices in Japan and Europe that had been closed to cut costs in the 1960s by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.
