Southland’s International Trade
The U.S. government’s daily deposits from custom collections at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles average about $10 million, with an additional $2 million from Los Angeles International Airport.
“I’m seeing that collection going to the bank every day and I’m always staggered by it,” said Mary Rasmussen, assistant district director for the entry division of Los Angeles District of the U.S. Customs Service.
Those sums are collections only from duty fees and taxes and do not include monies collected for drug violations or seizures of currencies.
Customs collections through the three points of entry totaled $2.54 billion for the 10 months ended July 31. (The district’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30.) That was up from $2.4 billion from the year-ago period.
Collections for all of fiscal 1988 are expected to exceed the previous year’s $3 billion, when the Los Angeles District was the highest collection center in country, exceeding New York Seaport by $1 billion, according to Rasmussen.
The California World Trade Commission’s Office of Export Development has moved from Sacramento into temporary quarters in Long Beach until its new home in the Greater Los Angeles World Trade Center is completed. The office helps to introduce California companies to international trade by helping them participate in trade shows around the world.
“We moved to Southern California where we have found most of our exhibitors have come from and we wanted to be in the midst of them,” explained Gregory Mignano, executive director of the state World Trade Commission. The four-year-old export development office assists California firms with export potential to learn the ropes of trade shows. It annually participates in about two dozen trade shows and introduces more than 200 firms a year to international markets. “Our purpose is to introduce new-to-export or new-to-market companies to successful foreign marketing opportunities at the least cost and anxiety.”
The commission selects established trade shows with loyal buyer followings, creates a California Pavilion, puts discount travel and accommodation packages together for participants, consolidates freight for cheaper rates to ship show displays and provides a commission trade specialist and multilingual interpreters on site.
California moved on another front to become the first state to initiate a novel, export insurance program with the Foreign Credit Insurance Assn.
Beginning next month, the California Export Finance Office will work with the service insurance arm of the Export-Import Bank to provide selected exporters with short-term credit insurance on a transaction basis. The state office will administer the $10-million umbrella policy, which is available to exporters who are seeking loans under the California Export Finance Office’s loan guarantee program.
“The purpose is to take the uninsured exporter and quickly get him covered for the purposes of getting financing for the immediate transaction at hand,” explained L. Fargo Wells, director of the California Export Finance Office. “The $10-million policy will help make our program more adaptable to the needs of the exporters without the tangle of a whole bunch of red tape.”
