US & FCS overseas operations: an active advocate of U.S. business - Foreign Commercial Service

Business America, March 5, 1984 by James A. Moorhouse

US&FCS Overseas Operations:

An Active Advocate of U.S. Business

The U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service (US&FCS) was establishe din April 1980 as a result of Congress' wish to give commercial activites overseas higher visibility in embassies and a revitalized staff to include individuals with significant business experience.

Both objectives have been achieved. President Reagan and Secretaries Baldrige and Shultz have instructed each U.S. ambassador overseas that he or she must become an active advocate of U.S. business. Also, about half of the approximately 175 US&FCS American officers working in 68 countries have been hired directly from the private sector.

Our new officers have come to us with varied backgrounds; a number were employed by multinational firms such as IBM, Bank of American, International Harvester, and Addressograph-Multigraph, and several owned their own small export businesses. All understand firsthand the problems encountered by American companies in their efforts to trade abroad. These men and women from the private sector, working with experienced former State Department officers and Commerce Department officials overseas, now comprise a hard-hitting, aggressive corps of professionals who know what is expected of them. In addition to the excellent job the Americans are doing abroad, out most valued asset, without question, is the group of about 500 Foreign Nationals who provide continuity in our commercial programs.

The Office of Overseas Operations establishes staffing levels at posts, works with the Commercial offices to determine their annual performance targest, and evaluates the performance of these officers at year's end. When the Service was transferred to the Commerce Department, it was clear that many positions were misallocated. We had more people serving in Germany than in the entire Middle East, and we had several one-person posts in key emerging markets where the work load was five to six times higher than in markets which had begun to show slippage. Working with our ambassadors overseas, we have shifted almost 10 percent of our resources to bring our personnel into better alignment with U.S. export potential. We have also established general guidelines for our officers overseas, and we expect them to spend about half of their time in business counseling and outreach activities. We continue to look for ways to streamline the administrative requirements so officers can get out from behind their desks. Last year our personnel overseas counseled well over 100,000 visiting U.S. business people or foreign importers, and approximately 80 percent or our activity supports the export efforts of small and medium-sized new-to-maket and new-to-export business.

The following examples show what we can do for U.S. business:

A small, new-to-market medical equipment company from Congington, Louisiana was provided sales leads in Panama which resulted in $140,000 of business with a possibility of more than $100,000 in future sales.

In Lisbon, the commercial staff arranged for five U.S. coal companies to meet with the Portuguese Electric Company. The mission resulted in the purchase of 1.7 million tons of coal annually over the next ten years, representing an export sale of almost a billion dollars.

Our small post in Guayaquil, Ecuador was successful in helping Seattle-based company win an Inter-American Development Bank contract to supply 18 fishing vessels valued at over $3 million to the Ecuadorean National Fisheries Company.

A $3 million sale involved a San Francisco seed company working with our Foreign Commercial Service office in Baghdad to provide seed grains to the Iraqui government.

In September 1983, six U.S. salted cod exporters from Washington State, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico visited Brazil, where they have made a major penetration which should result in sales of about $12 million by next year.

Commercial personnel in Beijing were swamped last year by hundreds of large and small-sized firms visiting China to take advantage of that country's drive towards modernization. Our staff helped a major multinational computer company sell 14 computers to Chinese universities and also worked for almost a year with the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications to assist another company to obtain an award for $250 million of digital switching equipment.

One successful exporter who has made regular use of Commerce Department services is Ms. Audrey March King, Executive President of Marsh Stencil Machine Company of Belleville, Ill. Commenting on US&FCS services, Ms. King stated:

"I am convinced that the services in place at the US&FCS are excellent programs that benefit the small and medium-sized American company. There is a great problem in the lack of sufficient use of these services by the American businessman. There is a perception held by many American businessmen from years ago that the foreign commercial operation does not know or care about private sector business as it should. This is obviously completely false.'