TROY – Michigan has most of the pieces needed to be a hub for moving goods across the continent, but it needs that right marketing effort to make businesses aware the services are there, a variety of experts told those gathered for a forum on regional exports by the Michigan State University Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

Improving Michigan’s position as a regional transportation hub could create 66,000 jobs and bring a variety of other development to the state, those gathered said.

The conference Wednesday centered on one effort to bring coordination to trade between Michigan and Canada: the Great Lakes International Trade and Transport Hub, a partnership including MSU; Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia; the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and the chambers of commerce in Detroit, Genesee County and the Lansing region.

Peter Anastor, policy director for the MEDC and the state’s representative to the GLITTH, said the state is focused on developing trade. “We’re creating a vision and strategy to get the word out that we’re going to be a player,” he said.

Part of that, he said, is creating a marketing and branding campaign for the state’s logistics and export efforts. “We want to find a moniker we can brand Michigan, brand our assets,” he said.

“There’s got to be a way we can tie it into the Pure Michigan umbrella,” David Hollister, chair of the GLITTH Summit and vice president of Prima Civitas Foundation, another of the partners, said.

Hollister said it was important to come up with a name for the effort that would be more easily recognized (he offered as his first action point to head a subcommittee on that effort).

But the marketing effort also has to fall to those in business and economic development in the state to be more positive about its role in the region, said David Closs, chair of the Supply Chain Management School at MSU.

“We tell all the things that are wrong with the area. We haven’t told why it’s a good supply chain area,” Closs said. “Everybody you tell the story to can see the story, but the story doesn’t get told too much.”

The supply chain hub and export efforts play into other changes happening at MEDC, Anastor said. “We’re really trying to take a more regional approach on how we do economic development in our state,” he said. “There’s different ways each one of these regions is going to be able to plug into this initiative.”

The state also is looking longer term to expand its place in the region. “There are some longer-term things that need to be done with our infrastructure that are not going to be done overnight,” Anastor said.

One of those infrastructure needs, mentioned by several different speakers, is the New International Trade Crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, but so were expansions to the Aerotropolis and the Detroit Intermodal Freight Terminal.

Closs said Michigan has traditionally been treated as a peninsula when it comes to transportation, being bypassed for hubs and through transport. But he said the state is only a peninsula in relation to the United States.

“But if you look at moving across the border, we’re right in the hub,” he said.

Closs and others said Chicago is better positioned as a hub, but is also more congested, leaving Michigan in perfect position to steal some of its current traffic.

Closs said Michigan has the automotive industry to thank for much of its position. “The expertise the auto industry has developed is a really critical element that we have to market to the rest of the world,” he said.

But he said the effort has to be broader than any one facility or project. “We need to tell the story not for Detroit or for Toledo or Flint or Lansing or Ontario, but for the region,” he said.

Getting Michigan products across the borders is important because that is where the customers are, said Jeanne Broad, MEDC international trade development manager. She said 95 percent of the customers and 73 percent of the purchasing power for the kinds of goods produced in Michigan are in other countries.

“Exporting has become an increasing important pathway to creating jobs,” Broad said.

In 2010, Michigan was the eighth largest exporter in the United States. That’s down from a more consistent top five placement until about 10 years ago, Broad said. “We could be doing a lot better,” she said.

Michigan also has room to diversify its exports. Broad said about half of Michigan’s exports are to Canada, and McNiven said a substantial portion of those are parts moving between auto plants.

The MEDC just in the past year had renewed its efforts on helping companies begin or expand exports, Broad said. That effort includes grants, through a federal program, to help companies market themselves overseas.

The State Trade and Export Promotion program provides $25,000 grants to companies that are ready to export their products but need assistance getting spots in trade shows and making contacts, Broad said.

For those not yet ready to export, the agency offers assistance in developing the capacity, moving companies into position to apply for the grants, she said.

“The MEDC placed an emphasis on designing a program that might be sustainable whether or not federal funds were available in the future,” Broad said.

Darwin Rader, international sales and marketing manager for Zeeland Farm Services Incorporated, which exports soybeans around the world, and one of the panelists, said the system could be a step better if small companies could more easily find the information. “Something that could help is maybe if we had a hotline that anyone could call in,” he said.

Randy Redmer with Redmer Strategic Products and Services, who was in the audience at the event, said he had essentially stumbled on the information his company needed to take the next step in exporting its products (truck parts).

Border issues are not the only impediments to exporting from Michigan, Rader said.

“Michigan really can make it tough to compete sometimes,” he said.

In particular, Rader said the state’s air quality rules had added costs to the company’s processing plant. “The environmental regulations are way out of line,” he said.

The state’s taxes are also higher than competing nations, adding to costs, he said.

John Jamien, director of the Port of Detroit, who was in the audience, said he would like the chance to work with the farms to load some of that grain onto outgoing ships that now bring in steel.

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