St. Louis Hopes To Woo Chinese Cargo Business At Embassy Reception
FOX2now.com
December 8, 2009
by Charles Jaco
St. Louis is desperately trying to muscle its way into the global trade big-time. Part of that effort is an exclusive Washington D.C. embassy reception this week in honor of St. Louis. Missouri's senators, congressmen, and governor along with political, business, and labor leaders from St. Louis are the guests of honor at a private reception at the Chinese embassy in Washington Wednesday night.
They've been invited by Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong as part of the push to make St. Louis the air cargo hub for Chinese goods coming to the U.S. The Chinese ambassador has visited St. Louis and so has an upper-level trade group from China. St. Louis officials have visited Beijing twice.
Senator Kit Bond says," We took a trip to China to work on this. It was a bi-partisan federal, state, and local delegation that impressed the Chinese and they are reciprocating with a very strong indication they want to go ahead with it."
But, none of this will happen unless American firms can also use St. Louis to ship goods to China.
St. Louis County Chief of Staff Mike Jones says, "The critical element that they have in common is that they're high value commodities."
Those time-sensitive exports to China could be everything from livestock to computers to machinery.
St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay says, "It certainly mean tens of millions of major investment here in St. Louis, thousands of jobs, and really position St. Louis as a real international player."
Several other metro regions have taken note of St. Louis' aggressive moves with China. They are now trying to convince the Chinese to locate the hub in their cities. So St. Louis may have a head start, but it no longer has the race to itself.
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