Cutting Trade Deficit Takes More Than Etiquette

BOCA RATON, Fla. _ The speaker was advising her audience on the etiquette of crossing your legs in the Middle East. And it was all Fred Ziegler could do to stay calm.

It's not that he objected to what was being said at the seminar on international trade here recently.

It's what wasn't being said.

At least not as bluntly or openly as he'd like.

International trade has surpassed tourism as Florida's biggest industry. By the turn of the century, it's estimated that 90 percent of all American business will involve international sales or face international competition. There is some urgency to becoming more aggressive as exporters; the U.S. is on a pace to break last year's record trade deficit of $106.6 billion. And the seminar, sponsored by the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County and featuring a battery of trade experts, was designed to encourage small operators to go global and show them how.

In this context, the speaker's point that one must be sensitive to cultural difference when doing business abroad was valid. And if a leg cross that bares your sole would somehow insult an Arab prince you're doing a deal with, then, fine, Ziegler agreed, keep your foot on the floor.

But trade is a two-way street.

And it's not always paved.

So if sensitivity is important, Ziegler sat in the audience wondering, where do the Japanese get off insulting us? (Tokyo officials have attributed the need to recall Japanese-made seat belts to the slovenliness of Americans who clog their belt mechanisms with spilled drinks, crumbs and pet hairs).

And why talk so much about niceties like how to sit, Ziegler asked himself, when his own experience suggests the way to cut the trade deficit is to roll up your sleeves, load up a truck and drive it to wherever there's a customer?

Ziegler is a former Delray Beach, Fla., police officer who's building a business selling anything he can pack into a container and ship to the former Soviet Union. And he feels one big reason Americans have trouble competing in the global economy is that we've lost our entrepreneurial edge.

Maybe it was insensitive of Japanese officials to question our diligence when it comes to keeping our cars clean. And maybe there are unfair trade barriers that keep Americans from selling as much to the Japanese as they sell to us, which is what the Clinton administration is protesting with a threatened 100 percent import tax on Japanese luxury cars.

But, in general, maybe Americans do lack diligence when it comes to pursuing market opportunities outside our own borders. Maybe we've grown so accustomed to being the center of the economic world that we've forgotten how to compete at the fringes, where the customers may not have a line of credit at a U.S. bank or an account with UPS.

Washington has helped open foreign markets to American businesses through a series of multinational treaties and also trade and investment pacts with individual countries.

Tallahassee has joined other state governments in recognizing the need to support trade in ways that include guaranteeing loans to help small exporters.

And agencies such as the development board are helping local businesses learn about trade opportunities and the finer points of pursuing them _ including sensitivity to differences in culture, laws and payment.

But as important as differences may be, the bottom line in business is the same the world over. You've got to have something people want. You've got to get it to them. You've got to be real.

And you've got to hustle, which is where Ziegler starts to lose patience with wannabe traders in the American mainstream.

Too many of them figure it's enough to camp out at an offshore Hilton and practice politically correct body language with corporate royalty.

But as he prepares to take another soup-to-nuts shipment east, the real opportunities he sees being lost are out on the streets where foreigners respond to honest effort and value.

Just like Americans.

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