Category Archives: Economic development

Expanding U.S. 460 and the Chinese Connection

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 4 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

In the past day or so, there’s been a bit of buzz about a decades-old plan to expand the northwest to southeast route U.S. 460 takes through Virginia’s peanut country on its way to Tidewater. This latest bit of boosterism posits that giant ships inbound to Virginia via the widened Panama Canal will make for a large opportunity in trade.

Since existing Interstates linking Virginia Port Authority facilities in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News are inadequate to handle the transshipment of cargo containers (and the role of railroads Norfolk Southern and CSXT is curiously left out of the equation),  the thinking seems to be that U.S. 460 is the only way to go. Or, we miss out on a big bonanza. Or so “economic development officials” think.

I, for one, have never been completely trusting of economic development people.  They are like Realtors trying to make sales. The last bargain they brought us involved Amazon sans state sales taxes. That idea was so wrong-headed that the public screamed and the General Assembly actually slapped on the country’s largest digital retailer to same tax a small Virginia business has to pay. So much for intelligence or egalitarianism.

Yet there’s a much bigger issue out there that must be considered before Virginians start signing all those public-private deals to create superhighways through Planters-land. Most of the increase in imports that will enter the U.S. thanks to the Panama Canal project will be from China. Believe it or not, the U.S. has big and unresolved issues with the People’s Republic, which still is a Communist-controlled country that puts dissidents in jail or exiles them.

For evidence, look no farther than the op-ed page of today’s New York Times. Richard A. Clarke, who was George W. Bush’s special advisor for cybersecurity, warns that Chinese officials have long raided our Websites and data bases and emails to mine out advantageous bits of intelligence, mostly of an economic nature. Among victims of China’s data theft are such as firms as Sony, Citibank, Lockheed, Booz Allen, Google, EMC and Nasdaq. By hacking our files, the Chinese gain a leg up in research. They don’t have to spend so much on R&D because they can easily steal ours.

Meanwhile, a new report by the Brookings Institution is so worried about such thefts of intellectual property and cybersecurity that it urges a new round of negotiations between Washington and Beijing before things really get out of hand. “U.S.-China strategic distrust is growing, is potentially very corrosive, is little understood on either side, and therefore should be addressed directly as a major issue,” write authors Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi.

The authors cite some other familiar issues, such as Beijing’s one-sided currency trading and hard-edged trade policy negotiating as reason for wariness. Another issue is China’s acceleration of military strength. This may not involve the ability to strike globally with nuclear weapons as was the case with the former Soviet Union, but China is making big strides with regional weaponery that could ward off U.S. tactical moves or threaten Taiwan. A big component involves the ability to hack digital files and launch cyberattacks.

President Obama is wary of the threats China is posing. As wars in South Asia wind down, he is proposing placing U.S. Marines in Australia. They would be a small force designed to be a tripwire and send a message to Beijing that the U.S. is nearby and might respond to aggression.

As one who has covered the Soviet Union and Russia for many years, I have always been puzzled about why the U.S. was quick to slap the Russians with trade sanctions a’ la Jackson Vanik while the Chinese got away with similar human rights violations not to mention very hardball economic and trade policies.

From the sounds of it, Virginia’s economic development sector either doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know about the uncertainty of where America’s future with China is going. If they don’t start paying attention, however, we might end up with huge, empty ships at deserted docks with the rest of us paying for a huge, underused highway.

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Federal, Finance, Infrastructure, Politics, The Economy

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Virginia’s Next Economic Boom?

Posted on April 2, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 17 Comments

Virginia’s economic developers expect a wave of manufacturing and logistical investment when the Panama Canal expansion is complete. Opportunities this big, they say, come along only once in a generation.

by James A. Bacon

From peanut fields....

New mega-industrial parks and a proposed $1.8 billion highway could help create a world-class economic development asset in an unlikely corner of Virginia: the sparsely populated peanut country between Petersburg and Suffolk. Traversing farms, woodlands and hamlets, the 55-mile corridor has the potential to become one of the major sources of economic growth for Virginia in the decade ahead.

That assessment comes from Liz Povar, director-business development for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. “We see this as the future of Virginia,” she says. “That’s a big statement — and I’m serious about it.”

The completion of the Panama Canal expansion by 2014 or 2015 represents a historic opportunity for Virginia, according to Povar, an economic development professional whose career spans a half-dozen or more Virginia governors. A third, wider lock in the canal will allow massive vessels holding 18,000 TEUs – four times the capacity of existing ships – to traverse Panama, diverting significant traffic from West Coast Ports. At present, Hampton Roads is the only East Coast port with channels deep enough to receive those deep-draft ships, giving Virginia a first-mover advantage in capturing the anticipated surge in traffic before other ports can make needed investments.

…to Rolls Royce-scale OEMs?

The growth in container shipments will be a boon to the Port of Virginia, of course. But the McDonnell administration hopes to leverage the traffic into massive new investment in logistics facilities and advanced-manufacturing complexes whose supply chains run through the ports. Economic developers are gunning for economic game-changers that bring a network of suppliers in their wake — like aerospace giant Rolls Royce, which in 2007 announced investments potentially reaching $500 million in Prince George County.

The VEDP, the port and local industrial development authorities have seen this opportunity coming for some time. But not until the McDonnell administration have all the stakeholders coordinated efforts, plotted a cohesive strategy and backed it up with substantial state funding, says Povar. The state has committed $500 million in public dollars to build the new U.S. 460 connector, created tax incentives to stimulate port activity and, awaiting the governor’s signature, enacted tens of millions in tax credits for companies investing in a new development zone. Meanwhile, state officials across agencies and secretariats are partnering to “reach out to selected companies that can utilize the assets of a strong logistics network,” she says. Sussex, Southampton and Isle of Wight counties are creating giant industrial parks that will provide enough acreage for the biggest facilities.

This emerging vision for the future of downstate economic development has yet to spread beyond the stakeholders involved. The only piece of the plan to occasion much debate is the U.S. 460 connector, which is said to provide a critically needed alternative to the overloaded Interstate 64 out of Hampton Roads. Smart Growth advocates question the economics of a highway project that requires such a massive public investment, while some Hampton Roads officials would prefer to see the $500 million steered to transportation priorities closer to the urban core. But no no one has yet disputed the premise that an economic boom could be in the offing.

If the mega-sites succeed in attracting OEM manufacturers, they potentially could account for $5.26 billion in direct, indirect and inducted economic output accounting for 8,300 jobs, according to a recent report by Chmura Economics & Analytics.

Liz Povar

And that’s just on the manufacturing side. Between Virginia’s ports, double-stacked CSX and Norfolk Southern rail service extending to the Midwest and Southeast, and connections to Interstates 95 and 85, Povar says that southeastern Virginia has what it takes to become a world-class logistical center. She sees the region growing into a warehouse-distribution node comparable to a half dozen clusters around the country like Alliance Park near Fort Worth, Tex., the FedEx complex in Memphis, Tenn., and the port and logistics activities around Long Beach, Calif.

The economic boon will extend beyond the Petersburg-Suffolk corridor. Industrial sites on I-95, I-85 and U.S. 58 could come into play. “We’ve got under public control more than 5,000 acres and 2.5 million square feet of existing buildings that could be used for advanced manufacturing and logistics/distribution,” says Povar. “We have over 22 publicly controlled industrial parks with water, fiber, sewer and zoning. … All of those combined, once they are packaged and marketed in an aggressive and sustained way, can help make Virginia a world-class logistics headquarters.” Read more.

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Five Ways Virginia Sucks

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 6 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

An alternative blogger is listing five ways Virginia may be the worst state in the union, a.k.a. “Bob Land.”

Tara Lohan of AlterNet notes that generally, watching the news these days is like going through a time warp when it comes to debates about birth control or teaching science in the classroom. States such as Georgia and Missouri come to mind in this regard, but Virginia, she says, is the worst.

Here are five reasons why:

  • Despite the horrific Virginia Tech shootings and public polling wishing otherwise, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has successfully pushed through a measure to repeal the one handgun a month purchase limit in the state. He apparently doesn’t care that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says that “Virginia is the No. 1 out-of-state source” of handguns in the country.
  • Virginia may have 1,600 children up for adoption. But not if you are gay or lesbian. Virginia allows adoption agencies to deny placements” to people who conflict with their religious beliefs.
  • Hard right Atty. Gen. Kenneth Cuccinelli has waged a vigorous and expensive campaign in his witch hunt against former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann.
  •  Virginia’s powers have been backing a new coal-fired electricity plant just upwind of Colonial Williamsburg. According to The Virginian-Pilot, the plant would emit 2,000 pounds of arsenic, up to 7,000 pounds of benzene, 1,390 pounds of chromium and 118 points of mercury into the air every year.
  • McDonnell launched a “War on Women” with his backing of a law requiring women considering abortion to have an ultrasound test. He backed away from a more invasive way of doing the test which is not deemed a medical necessity.

In general, Lohan hits the highlights, although she misses a little context. One is that since he is elected separately, Cuccinnelli doesn’t report to McDonnell. The Old Dominion Electric Cooperative coal plant has been put on hold mostly because of financing issues. The flood of natural gas, much from hydraulic fracking, has put a serious dent in the viability of new coal-fired electricity.

But she hits most of the notes. Interesting to read something other than what a dandy state Virginia is for business.

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Posted in 2012, Abortion, Blogs and blog administration, Children and families, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disaster planning, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Finance, Gay rights, Gun rights, Money in politics, Science & Technology, Social services

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What Baconauts Won’t Discuss

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 15 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

Reading the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog always displays breathtaking contradictions. Chief among them is the huge contradiction between pushing “smart growth” and shunning any form of increasing gasoline taxation.

The crux is that we have lots of horrendous sprawl in the state such as all of Northern Virginia, Route 3 in Fredericksburg and U.S. 29 in Charlottesville. We have underfunded and under-maintained roads. That all adds up to a death spiral of bad planning and a slavish adherence to el-cheapo ways of doing things – all in the name of the Cato Institute.

In Virginia, for instance, the state gasoline tax is 17.5 cents a gallon. It hasn’t been raised in 25 years. It hasn’t even been made to adjust for inflation. By contrast, North Carolina’s gas tax is 38.9 cents per gallon.

As politicians, especially Republicans such as Gov. Robert F. McDonnell stubbornly refuse to consider the obvious solution to their many road issues, they have the rest of us jumping through one convoluted hoop after the other trying complicated ways to get funds without taxation. It’s a bit like trying to breathe without air.

That brings up another point – the insane accusations that Barack Obama is responsible for $4 a gallon gasoline. GOPers like Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal (oil state guy) claim that gasoline prices have doubled under Obama and his energy policies are now creating havoc at the pump. The reality is that setting gasoline prices has a lot more to do with Asian demand the Iranian nuclear facilities than the policies of one U.S. president, who, by the way, has made big progress in weaning the country away from foreign oil.

Yet the biggest irony is spelled out in the latest issue of The New Yorker and comes, surprise, from Romney’s own economics adviser, Greg Mankiw. The Harvard professor recently wrote: “Economists who have added up all the externalities associated with driving conclude that a tax exceeding $2 a gallon makes sense…By taxing bad things more, we could tax good things less.”

Now, if you happen to read Bacon’s Rebellion’s most prominent blogger, we get an education how smart growth could make our lives better. We need to build more housing in more densely-packed areas, go for green zones, reduce wasteful and polluting gasoline use and try mass transit (all dipped in a libertarian flavor of course!)

The unspoken part is what Mankiw brings up. Federal gas tax is a puny 18.4 cents a gallon. If you raise  it to $2 a gallon, as Mankiw suggests, you’d suddenly have smart growth – presto! You’d have a lot of other things, too, such as much higher mileage cars, a fatter federal checkbook and less stupidity when it comes to highway and housing planning.

Are we going to get this? Of course not. The status quo politicians are hardly going to pretend the gas hike issue exists while blaming Obama for something not of his making. Meanwhile, readers of Bacon’s Rebellion will be treated to the increasingly amusing acts of contortionists stretching and folding any way they can to avoid discussing tax hikes. As a former altar boy I can appreciate trying to keep the dogma pure.

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Hate ObamaCare? Try Social Media

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 18 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

For all the chatter before the U.S. Supreme Court and pundits, ObamaCare has raised critical questions striking at the heart of individual rights and the Constitution. Yet there’s another, far more powerful and potentially more sinister force out there that is far more ominous along similar grounds: social media.

True, “social media” is considered “private industry” since it is dominated by fast-growing companies such as Facebook and therefore is considered “ok” by the libertarian crowd. They said the same thing back in the 1980s when Bill Gates cleverly forced more than 85 percent of the market to use his mediocre computer operating system, often by predatory tactics, or so critics say.

Now we have Facebook, created by yet another brainy Harvard geek, everywhere, dominating everything and changing, for the worse, how people communicate, how they can protect their privacy, intellectual property, how they think and how they write. (Mind you, it is “OK” because it is “private industry.”)

If you want to check into newspaper stories, you are often forced to go to a Facebook page where you must wade through a swamp of irrelevant crap such as what someone’s latest cat looks like and what they thought of last night’s Fettuccini Alfredo. Grandmothers feel a little heartbroken when their grandchildren say they can’t come over because they have to study, but then post their same-day trips to a theme park on their Facebook pages where Grandma can easily see them. Even common courtesy is being taken apart by this latest fad.

The issues created by Facebook go far beyond ObamaCare requiring everyone to get health insurance. The Virginia State Police is now under fierce attack by civil libertarians for forcing applicant state troopers to hand over passwords so investigators can vet their Facebook pages. In ancient days, it would be like giving inquisitors every personal letter you ever wrote or your diary.

True, vetting state employees especially cops is important. If Gov. Robert F. McDonnell had been a little more attentive about who his personal chef was, he wouldn’t be getting front-page publicity. One wonders why he needs a chef to handle 100 events a year, but I guess it’s better that way, since if he didn’t have a chef, there are plenty of powerful corporations and lobbying firm all too happy to handle his canapés for him. But there must be limits. Not only the State Police, but many companies, are stepping over the personal privacy lane because enormously public Facebook makes it easy.

Another Facebook issue is who controls content. The company has gotten into trouble over this one before. The company line is that what you post is yours, but Facebook pretty much gets to do whatever it wants with it until you officially remove the item. Sometimes, it is hard to change anything with these faceless, computer-driven firms who often don’t even bother to have phone trees, let along Customer Relationship Managers, to handle your problem.

Intellectual property is another big issue. If you post your creative work, how do you know it isn’t being ripped off? This question drills down to a generational divide. Some of the 20-somethings I work with part-time are so part of the Facebook culture, they judge their success by their number of hits, rather than the chances that their content is being ripped off. On the other hand, one of my daughters, a college senior studying art, told me than none of her colleagues will ever post any of their work on Facebook, not even photos of paintings, because they are too afraid of losing ownership control and there seem to be no safeguards.

Lastly, since Facebook and Tweets and Twitters (whatever) are designed around quick, instant messages, they are as forgettable as they are extremely brief. The process puts enormous pressure on users not to do any deep thinking, develop an argument or share any more than the simplest of creative ideas.

What you are seeing is the medium truly becoming the message (or, even better, the massage).  Oops, that sounds so 1960s Marshall McLuhan. I am showing my age.

 

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Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Children and families, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Economic development, Economy, Federal, Science & Technology

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The Uranium Quagmire

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 2 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

For the 50 or so people sitting in the quaint Pepsi-Cola building Tuesday in Danville’s tobacco warehouse district, the information seemed to spawn more frustration than clarity. They had gathered to hear two economic impact reports regarding controversial plans by Virginia Uranium to mine an ore deposit a dozen miles to the north in Chatham.

“The bottom line is that we don’t know what will happen in the future,” said Katherine Heller, a senior economist at RTI International. The Research Triangle Park, N.C. consulting firm had been hired by regional agencies to estimate what happens if Virginia Uranium, owned by local and Canadian investors, proceeds with its plans for a uranium mining and milling complex.

The RTI report, in addition to one prepared for the state by Chmura Economics and Analytics in Richmond, says that barring human error and adequate regulations, the uranium project could be a boon for the depressed, former textile and furniture region. RTI predicts it could bring in 724 jobs and $162 million in a year affecting an area 50 miles from the mine and milling operation. Chmura’s report says essentially the same thing.

Those predictions, however, assume the state overcomes big hurdles, as yet another report by the National Academy of Sciences says it must face. Among those obstacles:

  • Virginia has no laws regulating uranium mining or milling ore into useable yellowcake. Gov. Robert F. McDonnell recommended delaying any decision on voiding a nearly three-decades-long ban on uranium mining in the state until more study is done. He has set up a group to study the issue.
  • According to RTI, the tailings from the uranium deposit that runs 1,500-foot deep will be stored permanently underground in an area near vital drinking water supplies. According to Heller, those dump sites will have to be monitored indefinitely, most likely for thousands of years. There are no plans yet to do such monitoring or how to pay for it.
  • There are no plans yet on requiring Virginia Uranium to set aside funds in escrow to help localities deal the costs and loss of businesses and taxes due a potential spill or accident. It also isn’t clear who will pay for the necessary state regulators and inspectors especially when the upcoming budget is tight and has yet to be approved.
  • There are lingering questions and confusion over how transparent the McDonnell group will be as it studies uranium mining. At first, Cathie J. France, a deputy director of the Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy who heads the uranium committee, said that her group would not hold public hearings but would accept written comment and provide a Web page. After public criticism, Martin L. Kent, McDonnell’s chief of staff, wrote legislators that due to “misunderstanding” there had been a “mischaracterization” of how public comment will be obtained. He says that the group will “accept public comment during four open meetings.”
  • The economic health of the uranium plans depends on highly volatile global uranium pricing. Heller said that RTI based its predictions on a “middle high” estimate that could be subject to big and unexpected swings.
  • So far, studies regarding uranium mining have cost various government entities more than $2.7 million. The RTI study cost $530,000. Yet they all confront the same problem, the impossibility of assessing risk or economic fallout if there are no state regulations or enforcement mechanisms in place to set a benchmark.

The bottom line is that the uranium idea seems terribly premature. Virginia Uranium has already drawn negative attention for taking legislators on expenses-paid trips to places such as Paris. McDonnell wants his committee to make recommendations to the 2013 General Assembly. That may be way too soon.

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The “Agenda 21″ Nutbars

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 12 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

A half a century ago in rural places like the tobacco and corn fields of Eastern North Carolina, there used to be billboards with strong and aggressive messages. One said: “This Is Klan Country.” Another advocated: “U.S. Out of the United Nations.”

Both represented frightening, hard-right elements. The source of the first sign was obvious. Another, slightly more presentable group had put up the second sign. That was the John Birch Society, an ultra-conservative organization founded in 1958 that hated communists, pushed U.S. unilateralism, and purported to uphold so-called “American” values, which, at the time, were codes words for Anglo Saxon “Christians” upset about everything from growing globalism to integrating the races at home.

Now, people of the same ilk, Tea Partiers and other hard-right types, are extending decades-old U.N. paranoia to down-in-the-weeds smart growth policies that set up limits such as lot size, where growth should go and how services can be matched to growth.

In an intriguing article in this Sunday’s Richmond Times Dispatch, reporter Rex Springston outlines how this cabal apparently based in the Richmond area and in the watery Middle Neck has targeted the smart growth campaign. They have helped delay comprehensive plans in Henrico and Chesterfield Counties, oppose the use of electricity meters, bike paths, and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.

Their rallying cry is the so-called “Agenda 21” which is a policy established by the U.N. back in the early 1990s promoting the then-fashionable ideals of “sustainable development.” Given that the document came from an international group representing countries of all income and development levels, it pushes such guidelines as grouping housing for the sake of efficient resource use.

The anti-Agenda 21 crowd claims that the plan would strip away home ownership. It would end private farming and would apparently push people into Stalin-style collective farms or somesuch. Erecting smart electric meters in individuals’ houses for more efficient use of electricity is part of a plot for mass surveillance by Big Government. Naturally, George Soros, the billionaire, left-leaning financier, is behind this. Yet the Republican National Committee and Next Gingrich have embraced getting rid of Agenda 21.

Close to my home in Chesterfield County, anti- Agenda 21 types have helped delay adoption of a new comprehensive plan which had been designed more or less around smart growth policies. Growth would be concentrated around existing highway and commercial areas and not allowed to hopscotch hither and yon. A “green zone” in southwestern Chesterfield where I live would be kept green. Tea Party types threw wrench into that one, saying it would take property rights away from owners.

One wonders where these clowns were back 20 years ago when Chesterfield’s growth-happy board of supervisors gave into every idea any developer had. That is why schools are overcrowded and police and fire services are short-changed. My small subdivision has shifted school districts three times in 10 years to help the county rectify its disastrous planning.

The Tea Party people like bad planning because it represents “freedom,” I would guess. It seems extremely odd that they would drag in a sleepy, two-decades-old UN proposal as their whipping boy. Their claims that it is fostering global socialism is as nutty as the John Birch Society itself.

One wonders, with the global economy deciding where jobs go more and more, how these people deal with the 21st century world. Their solution seems to be to dress up like Patrick Henry in colonial garb, wave their rattlesnake flags and tell the rest of the world where to go. The rest of us will be paying for the consequences.

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Factoid of the Day: Virginia’s Biggest Agricultural Customer

Posted on March 15, 2012 by James A. Bacon| 1 Comment

Morocco? Really?

Virginia agricultural exports are on a roll, having increased 6% in value in 2011. And our biggest export customer was… Morocco. Yes, that small African country purchased $360 million in Virginia farm and wood products, more than China ($304 million), Canada ($220 million), Switzerland, Egypt, Tunisia, Cuba, Venezuela, Indonesia, or any other country.

Top export products in 2011 included soybeans, poultry, wheat, pork, lumber and wood products, corn, animal feed, un-manufactured leaf tobacco, fats and oils, cotton, marine and aquaculture products, fresh vegetables, raw peanuts, hides and skins, processed foods, and beverages, including wine. So says this press release from the Guv’s office.

– JAB

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Who Gets Credit for Virginia’s Recovery?

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Peter Galuszka| 6 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

As with fruit tree blossoms, economic recovery is in the springtime air in the Old Dominion. Virginia’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.8 percent in January, a three-year low. The question now is who gets credit for it.

Leading the “credit me” pack is Gov. Robert F. McDonnell who insists that his job creation policies are responsible for the uptick.  “Now the good news that we’re beginning to come out of this economic downturn stronger and better than most other states,” he says.

Setting himself him as a “jobs” creator is especially important to McDonnell now that his ambitions to be considered as a vice presidential candidate have taken major hits with his handling of the extremely divisive moves by hard-right legislators to promote their anti-abortion agenda. McDonnell’s positions have been mocked on televisions shows such as Saturday Night Live. Doonesbury is running cartoon strips this week lambasting conservative white males in Texas (read “Virginia,” too) for their extreme ham-handedness in how they regard women considering their legal right to abortion.

To be sure, McDonnell has worked hard to get more jobs in Virginia. One notable example is Amazon.com which will open distribution centers in Dinwiddie and Chesterfield Counties that will create hundreds of new jobs. Problem is: McDonnell let Amazon get away with paying a state sales tax as an incentive until the General Assembly shot down that idea.

Another problem with McDonnell’s claims is that some of the jobs he may be creating are just in the pipeline. He did win a $3 billion transportation bond package, but the bulk of those jobs are a bit down the road.

What’s unsettling about McDonnell’s claims, however, is that he leaves out the role that federal jobs and government spending played in the recovery. As a former Army officer, he ought to know that Virginia is chock-a-block with defense jobs. President Barack Obama gets no credit, either. Virginia benefited from Obama’s stimulus package in 2009 and 2010, while Republicans such as McDonnell whined away about “socialism” and runaway deficit spending. Yet those very policies have finally borne fruit.

James Koch, an economics professor at Old Dominion University, says that McDonnell’s job creation program was helpful. “But the truth is governors don’t have very many tools to influence what’s happening nationally, and what’s happening in Virginia reflects the national recovery in many respects,” he adds.

Predictably, Democratic Party had stronger criticism of McDonnell for ignoring Obama’s contribution. The bottom line is that McDonnell does have the right idea on creating jobs. But really should give credit where it is due.

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IG of the Day: Exports in Virginia’s Economy

Posted on March 13, 2012 by James A. Bacon| Comments Off

Virginia may boast one of the premier ports on the East Coast and one of the premier international airports in the country, but Virginia’s metropolitan regions are not very plugged into the global economy. According to the Brookings Institution’s “Metropolitan Exports Dashboard,” the percentage of GDP accounted for by exports in the Washington, Hampton Roads and Richmond economies is less than 10%. That’s too bad because export-related jobs tend to be better paid than non-export jobs.

I’m old enough to remember when Jerry Baliles was governor. He saw exports and Foreign Direct Investment as the key to economic development for Virginia. He led numerous overseas trade missions and he emphasized the teaching of geography in Virginia schools. He helped launch other initiatives to make Virginians more cosmopolitan in their thinking, such the Japan-Virginia society, which at one time was a very active organization. Since the late 1980s, Virginians have become more insular. Governors lead fewer missions overseas. Virginia’s eonomy has suffered the downside of globalization — our apparel, textile and furniture industries have been obliterated — but my sense is that Virginia businesses have not taken full advantage of the opportunities that globalization offers. Our loss.

Update: The Governor’s office issued this press release noting that Virginia agricultural exports increased 6% in 2011, reaching record levels. The exports totaled $2.35 billion in value. Presumably, agricultural exports are not captured in the metropolitan statistics cited by Brookings: Urban areas don’t have a lot of farms and woodlands.

– JAB

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