Gov. Gary Locke hands out Washington french fries to customers at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, during his last trade mission to Asia last week.

Last gubernatorial trade mission proved fruitful for potatoes

MOSES LAKE— Gov. Gary Locke's last trade mission provided a cornucopia of positive results for the state's potato products.

Washington State Potato Commission executive director Pat Boss said that there were three reasons the WSPC accompanied Locke on his 10-day trade mission to China, Vietnam and Thailand.

In China, the WSPC worked with Locke on trade barrier issues to speed up the process to get the Chinese government to allow fresh potatoes into China. The process had been delayed, Boss said, but Locke asked why Washington is unable to ship their potatoes to China when Alaska is allowed to do so.

"After about an hour and a half of what I call diplomatic chess, the Chinese agreed that they were going to speed up the process for considering our request to export potatoes," Boss said.

In what Boss called an unprecedented move, WSPC commissioner Phil Schoening also got the opportunity to meet Chinese President Hu, on the day he had just been given full power.

"Believe it or not, we actually got a venue to talk about potatoes with the president of China," Boss said. "Which is very unheard of, because most governors that go to Asia don't get to meet the president of China. Because (Locke) is Chinese-American, I think it helped him to get that high level of a meeting."

Boss said that even President Bush has no guarantee when he goes to China that he's going to meet the Chinese president.

"The governor has the ability when he's in Asia, because he's Asian-American, to get those kinds of meetings," Boss said. "So we use that to our advantage. We kind of worked off his coattails to get into these meetings and it paid dividends."

In Vietnam, Locke and the WSPC worked on French fry trade barrier issues about the level of paperwork and tariffs involved in shipping fries from Washington and the United States.

Boss said the two issues that needed to be brought up were simplification of the shipping system and lowering the tariffs. He said Locke arranged another high-level meeting in Hanoi and weighed out the importance of fries being given easier access to the Vietnam markets.

At the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City — the primary restaurant to buy fries, and which buys fries from Quincy and the Tri-Cities — the WSPC also arranged for the governor to serve Washington french fries.

"There was about probably 10 different newspapers there from Vietnam, about two or three TV stations and two radio stations, so we had major news coverage of this event," Boss said. "It was a huge hit."

In Bangkok, Thailand, the WSPC highlighted to Thai and U.S. government officials that fries need to get high priority as the countries negotiate a free trade agreement, Boss said.

"The concern we have is that if we don't get a decent tariff or a lower tariff, there's other countries waiting in the wings right now, like Australia and New Zealand, that are also negotiating trade agreements," he said. "We're very concerned that if we don't get a lower tariff, Australia and New Zealand will, and they'll undercut us."

The WSPC also recently received a grant from the USDA to do technical seminars in Bangkok come winter regarding chip potatoes and to deal with the Thai chip potato shortage, Boss said. The trip allowed the WSPC to set the stage for the winter seminars.

With this being Locke's final trade mission, Boss said he has spoken to both of the gubernatorial candidates, Dino Rossi and Christine Gregoire.

"They're not Asian-American and they know that they don't have the experience in Asia like the governor does, but both of the candidates have assured me that they're going to continue to use their position as governor, if they're elected governor, to promote trade of Washington products," he said.

Boss said he didn't think that Rossi or Gregoire would be as effective as Locke, "just because the fact that he was Chinese-American just added a whole new dimension to these missions," so the WSPC will have to reevaluate its participation in future trade missions.

"We do believe having Gov. Locke as governor the last eight years has helped us on trade matters," he said. "That's not so we agree with the governor on everything. We have a lot that we don't agree with him on, but on the trade stuff he has been extremely helpful, he opens doors and that's what we need."