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Business

Global Econ 101

By CHRIS KRAUL, trade reporter
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Julie Meier Wright, the former state secretary of trade and commerce, now chief exec of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp., recently led a trade mission to Asia along with Juan Martinez, secretary of economic development for the Mexican state of Baja California. They called on 350 companies to consider the San Diego-Baja region as a site for establishing or expanding U.S. facilities. Having been on the job since August 1997, Wright has gotten over her initial fears that marketing the region would open her office up to “xenophobic” criticism from business and labor that her office is somehow promoting the “giant sucking sound” of job flight to Mexico. “It was an early concern that never materialized. People are pretty sophisticated about the global marketplace,” Wright said.

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Chris Kraul

Chris Kraul covered South America for the Los Angeles Times from his base in Bogota, Colombia. He joined the paper in 1987 and was business editor of the San Diego edition until it closed in 1992. He then began covering the border and Mexican economies until his assignment to The Times’ Mexico City bureau in 2001. He reopened the paper’s Bogota bureau in 2006. He has also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida and also has been a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union-Tribune and the San Diego Business Journal.

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