Obama Export Advisory Council

How is the President doing? President Obama’s terms of presidency so far, like most of the US presidents, has been a bumpy one. Before he started his work in the oval office, he was passed with the enormous economic depression. People lost confidence on the banks and investment companies. Fortunately, Democrates have been holding majorities in both Congress and Senate. Without excessive challenges, the White House could still pass the aggressive TARP, together with practically zero federal interest rate policy from FED, US could narrowly escape a disastrous recession.

Right now, Obama administration is still deeply troubled by the nearly 10% unemployment which has shown little sign of coming down. There are lots of bright economists and finance experts around Obama, who have figured out the key to that are – how to raise US products competitiveness in world markets, and promote more exports?

Export Advisory Council President Obama announced today July 8, 2010 ...."Export growth leads to job growth and economic growth" He named 18 business, labor and government leaders to a new export advisory council. "At a time when jobs are in short supply, building exports is an imperative"

They have also highlighted China and South Korea as two of the key markets US firms should focus their laser beams to sell more.GM have just recently released that they have sold more cars in China than in US. That is a mix of embarrassment and strong red light to US policy makers, and possibly to Commerce Secretary, Gary Loh. They know this will happen one day, but it has come a bit too early for them to accept.

Will China buy more from US? Although China is now still the close no 2 biggest creditor of US, next to Japan, China have the most mobile telephone users with their enormous demand for telecom equipment. Goggle try to stay strong with American spirit, but ultimately have to work under China’s requirements before they can be awarded with the ICT license. Apple can warn Foxconn to take serious attention not to exploit the Chinese workers, but Steve Jobs certainly would be pleased to get the competitive costing from Foxconn while they can meet Apple’s stringent technical specifications.

President Obama calls for proposals from CEOs of top enterprises, and undoubtedly they are brilliant business leaders on how to increase exports to China. Probably, US products have to be advanced to sell in China, excel what Chinese can produce by themselves. China have made and implemented the TD-SCDMA for mobile networks, US have to prove and convince the Chinese that CDMA is still a much better solution, and have to be price competitive too.

Pharmaceutical sector might be a breakthrough. US are still having the biggest percentage of Nobel prize winners and possibly most top gun scientists with advanced research bases. Boeing can still sell more passenger planes to China, as long as Chinese leaders still find it comfortable to have the trade more balanced.

If the US still have 1/10 of the workforce left unemployed, the Democrates would be in huge risk of losing their mid term election, meaning they might lose their control in Congress and/or Senate. President Obama might be able to win a second term, if he can still get applause from the health reform and tackle the overall economic recovery. A day in politics can be too long, let’s deal with today first.

Editor: Dennis WK Leung 2009.75.003