Last month, Governor Tina Kotek announced the creation of a new state resource to help Oregon businesses reach international markets.
The Global Trade Desk advises businesses large and small on how to export their products and find business overseas. Tatum Albertine, the Global Trade Manager at Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency, joins us to share more details.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Governor Tina Kotek announced the creation of a new state resource for businesses last month. It’s called the Global Trade Desk. It’s part of Business Oregon, the state’s economic development agency. It’s described as a single point of contact for businesses that want to export their products and find new markets overseas.
Tatum Albertine is in charge of this new program. She is a Global Trade Manager at Business Oregon, and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Tatum Albertine: Thank you for having me.
Miller: What’s the big idea behind this new desk, this new program?
Albertine: Well, it is a big idea, and the Global Trade Desk is exactly what you said. It’s a coordinated single-entry point for businesses to get help, information, ask questions about exporting and growing their business and growing their sales. We help businesses at any point in their exporting journey.
Miller: What are the big challenges that Oregon companies might face right now as they try to do that? I mean, why can’t they just do this themselves?
Albertine: Some businesses do, and that’s great, and we love to cheerlead them on. But at Business Oregon, we primarily help small and medium sized businesses with their global expansion. When you’re thinking about expanding globally – if you don’t operate a business, you might not know – there’s so many steps that may be involved with getting your product or your service into another market.
You might need to localize and get things in a different language. You might have to deal with regulators in Japan who you don’t know, or you don’t even know, maybe even what their regulations are. You might need help with financing. I mean, there’s literally dozens of things. So we have a team of global trade specialists who this is their life’s work. This is what they’ve done. And they are ready to answer the phone, when you call the Global Trade Desk, [to] council and chat with any business in Oregon about their journey.
Miller: Any business in Oregon, but it seems like what you’re saying is it’s less likely that Intel or Nike is going to call you up and say, “Hey, how do we do business in France?” I mean, these are global companies that have, I don’t know, probably 1,000 times the people power that you do to do this work themselves. So it’s smaller operators that are more likely to be calling you up?
Albertine: That is absolutely correct, and that tends to be our bread and butter. If Nike or Intel called us, we’d be happy to answer the call and help them in whatever way that Business Oregon can help them. But that is the core of our business, our clientele, the people who contact us. Most of the exports by number of firms is actually small and medium businesses, in Oregon and in the United States.
Miller: One of the interesting things about this to me is that when we’ve been talking about global trade challenges in this country for the last year-and-a-half, it’s often been about tariffs and it’s often been meaning about imports. But your focus here is solely on exports?
Albertine: We are focused mostly on exports. I mean, the tariff-on-import question does play into every business’s calculation about how they operate and business decisions that they make. There’s tariff policies set at the federal level, so there’s not much that Tatum Albertine or the Global Trade Desk can do about changing those policies. However, there are things that we can do to help businesses plan, build that resilience and de-risk their business by growing their exports and growing their revenue. So that’s where we see the value being added is through our expertise and through our team, and everything like that.
Miller: This was just announced about three weeks ago. Have people been calling you?
Albertine: Yes, and we love getting calls on the Global Trade Desk. And you can call us at 503-229-5009. There’s a lovely human on the other end of the line. His name is Zach. He is not an AI chatbot. He’s a real human. He will take your information, do an intake with you, and get to know you and your business issue a little bit better.
We’re averaging about one query a day, which is pretty, I think, pretty good. We hear all kinds of queries. We sometimes hear about agriculture, food processors, wood, specialties. We’ve gotten really a mix of all kinds of different industries.
Miller: So a mix of different industries. What about a mix in terms of whether the people who are reaching out to you are currently exporting products and want to expand, or actually want to do something they’ve never done before?
Albertine: Yes, it is a mix. I would say it leans probably more towards the brand new. “I’m ready to have that first conversation about what this could mean for my business. I’m ready to have a conversation about resources I might need to invest, to begin this journey. I have a lot of questions.” Or, “Someone told me my product would do really well in Japan. Can you help me sort through that and figure out what markets would make sense for me?”
But it is really exciting to get those calls and emails from businesses who are thinking about it for the first time. However, we do have a few queries where they had a successful sale in Canada, and Canada’s a great market for a lot of Oregon businesses. It’s very close by. There’s so many reasons why Canada really works for a lot of exporters, but maybe they’re ready for the next challenge or something else to grow the business.
Miller: Where do you see some of the bigger opportunities for growth? And I’m thinking about by sector.
Albertine: Our top export sectors in Oregon right now are computer and electronic products, transportation equipment, machinery, chemicals, ag products, food and beverage products, and outdoor and consumer products. I think there’s a lot of opportunity in all of those sectors. The thing that Oregon businesses do really well at, in all markets overseas, is Oregon products tend to be a little bit niche, but super high quality. We are known around the world for amazing hazelnuts that are the best quality in the world, and manufacturing parts. The semiconductor ecosystem that Oregon has is known around the world.
There’s so many things like that. I think that reflects the people of Oregon and a lot of the values that we have as a state. It’s very high quality. They’re in-demand products, so we want to share that message with more businesses. If you don’t think you’re ready to export, I challenge you. You might be, but we just want to have that conversation with you through the Global Trade Desk.
Miller: You mentioned hazelnuts, for example, a famous Oregon product. I think after Turkey, we’re number one still. But there’s an established network of distributors, of buyers. There’s a private market version of this. So what can Zach provide, the one person who’s the point of contact, who’s going to pick up the phone if someone calls that number right now? I imagine he’s not necessarily the one who’s the hazelnut expert, but he could then pass that the farmer on to somebody else. But what could you do at this state agency that people can’t do with what I would hope is a robust private network of distributors and exporters?
Albertine: The world of global trade – and this maybe sounds a little cheesy because it’s the world of global trade – it’s huge. The markets overseas are huge. I think the greatest value that the Global Trade Desk brings to Oregon businesses is our people, the people that work inside Business Oregon. We have very experienced staff who understand trade. We understand economic development, government programs, export promotion processes. We also understand business realities. We are highly networked.
We have specialists on our team who specialize in certain sectors, but also can go a mile wide and an inch deep, and help you get to that next point. So I think the value add is really the counseling kind of role that we can play with businesses … hearing their ideas and making referrals out to other specialists and experts who we know, all around the United States and the world.
Miller: You mentioned Canada as a good market for Oregon products. You mentioned Japan earlier. But on the website that I was looking at, only one country is singled out in a special way. There’s a specific Korea desk for people interested in the Korean market. Why single out this one country?
Albertine: We are so lucky at Business Oregon. We have bilingual staff on the desk. Sharon, one of our global trade specialists, is bilingual in Korean and English, and we actually have a lot of Korean businesses doing business in Oregon. There’s a lot of Korean businesses interested in doing business in Oregon. That also includes Oregon companies who might want to sell their products in Korea. So one of the very exciting trade relationships that Oregon has is with Korea.
We also saw that Governor Tina Kotek had led her trade mission last year. She went to Japan, but also went to Korea. So we are just seeing so much interest in this market. We were very happy to also work with the government of Korea that wanted to establish Korean desks all over the United States. And we’re very lucky that Oregon’s able to sign up for this program, offer it and have our amazing staff help businesses, whether they were looking to invest in Oregon or they want to sell their products in Korea.
Miller: Does that mean that the Korean government is putting some money towards this?
Albertine: We don’t take the money from them. We are just part of a network of trade experts who focus on Korea. Especially in Oregon, it makes perfect sense for us. It was very easy, collaborative, yes. Enthusiastic, yes. Because we have been seeing so much interest in the Korean market. I think even if the Korean government might not have pushed or even asked about this opportunity, I think we would have ended up with something similar to it on our own.
Miller: Speaking of money, how do you think about the return on investment for this desk for Oregon taxpayers? In other words, why is this a good use of taxpayer money?
Albertine: I think there are a lot of businesses – medium, small, extra large, extra small – [that] have one thing in common that they really don’t like, and that’s uncertainty. And I think we are in a period of massive uncertainty in the United States, in terms of our trade relationships overseas. I think that it’s going to become more and more of an imperative that businesses, especially small and medium sized businesses, look at exporting as a way to kind of de-risk their revenue streams and grow their businesses. We’re seeing things fluctuate really fast. It’s hard to be resilient.
I think that the value we add through our people, through counseling, and being that single window and point of contact where we can make quick referrals and help you get to your next destination on your journey for exporting, is an amazing ROI that we’re just so happy to give businesses so that they can thrive, make more sales and bring more jobs to Oregon.
Miller: Often, when I ask a version of that question to policymakers, the answer is some version of “for every dollar we spend, we get four times more.” You didn’t say that, but you said this is a good return on investment. Do you think about this in such sort of stripped-down mathematical terms, that if we spend this dollar, then there’ll be this much of a boost to Oregon’s economy?
Albertine: There are a lot of statistics out there and they’re super Googleable. You can see how many dollars bring back. I mean, we run many different programs at Business Oregon. And the Global Trade Desk is brand new, so we don’t really have an ROI figure on the desk. But we do have grant programs that help take teams of businesses to trade shows and on trade missions. These can be very cost prohibitive for small and medium businesses, but they can be the number one game changer for making those sales and making those introductions overseas.
Those produce a very healthy ROI. Even five years ago, they were producing, I think, like a $10 or $13 for every dollar spent ROI. I mean, it kind of depends on which program you’re talking about. But just to give you a general ballpark, that’s the floor for us. So if it doesn’t answer that, then, you know … [laughs].
Miller: Tatum, thanks very much.
Albertine: Thank you so much.
Miller: Tatum Albertine is Global Trade Manager at Business Oregon. That’s the state’s economic development agency. They just launched the new Global Trade Desk, which is intended to support Oregon companies that want to start or expand the export side of their business.
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