WHEN the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council scheduled a Plaza Club breakfast "Update on the Asian Financial Crisis," 72 people turned out. Same time, same place two weeks later only 19 turned up to hear about "Commercial Opportunities in the European Union." Why Europe is
important to HawaiiUnderstandable, but Europe could be important, too, to Hawaii's future.
Our foods, flowers and high tech could expand in that market. More Europeans may be attracted to visit here.
An organization with the acronym TABD is worth our knowing about. It is the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue, through which large, medium and small businesses on both sides of the Atlantic have banded together to talk out trade problems.
It is taking the lead over governments in working out many solutions, according to Steve Craven, U.S. Department of Commerce official now stationed in Austria, but formerly in Hawaii and a variety of other Pacific and European posts.
TABD, for example, has pretty well shot down the government-favored idea that all trade in the European Union should be with metric measurements, Craven said. American producers will be allowed to continue dealing in inches and feet, ounces and pounds.
Craven says Europe is moving steadily toward becoming an economic bloc as important as the United States. The European Union's 12 member countries already have knocked down most major trade and visa barriers within their group. Even non-members on its borders are moving to match. Next year the EU countries will start a several-years-long process of displacing their national currencies with the euro. One day the euro may be as prized and stable as the U.S. dollar. Foreign exchange will be vastly simplified.
The European Union countries as a group are the largest U.S. trading partner. The balance of trade between the two areas is nearly even and has been for years. Investments in each other's areas also roughly balance out. Companies from each side employ about 3 million workers on the other side.
TABD has business sub-groups, often of as many as 2,000 businesses, that meet to focus on particular small regions of Europe and accept American businesses as participants.
One TABD initiative is to win agreements that when a product is accepted for distribution anywhere in Europe all other European nations will accept it and, conversely, that a product accepted for distribution in any state in the U.S. can be distributed throughout the United States.
TABD also is addressing questions of Internet usage with Americans favoring very limited regulation and no taxation. Concerns deal with personal data, property rights and finding ways that legal documents can be distributed verifiably on the net.
WHILE Europe is becoming more of a whole, Craven said, smart marketing still must vary by regions just as in America. European regions are more sharply defined by continuing language differences, but that is far from the whole picture of needed differentiation.
Hawaii's opportunities in Europe are unlikely ever to match our opportunities in Asia, but they could be significant. Europe can have a small balancing effect, particularly while Asian nations are recovering from their economic problems.
And it is not for big business only, Craven says. A call to a U.S. Department of Commerce office can produce more information.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.