Article published November 20, 2009
Granholm's shortsighted rhetoric on China hurts state
DETROIT - Gov. Jennifer Granholm took office vowing that she would go "anywhere, any time" to bring jobs home to Michigan. And she's lived up to that promise, with one glaring omission.
By her count, she has embarked on nine overseas investment missions. During the recent budget negotiations with the Legislature, she left the state for a whirlwind, three-day trip to Japan. She's been on trips to Jordan, Israel, Austria, Germany, even Sweden.
But she has never visited, or even made a special effort to court, the largest potential market in the world: China.
Tom Watkins, now perhaps the state's biggest booster of expanded business ties with China, is frankly exasperated.
"We need to be devising an aggressive plan to involve the world's newest financial superpower in reinventing and revitalizing Michigan's economy," said Mr. Watkins, a former state superintendent of schools who travels to China frequently.
Yet at the highest levels, that's not happening. "Not only has [the governor] still not made a trade mission to China in her nearly seven years in office, she continues to go to the anti-China well to curry political favor," Mr. Watkins charged.To be fair, he has had his own issues with the governor. She forced his ouster as superintendent of schools a few years ago, a job he tried hard to keep.
But he isn't the only person who has questioned her lack of initiative in courting China. Tim Skubick, the dean of the Lansing press corps, has raised the same questions. "You remember China, the place that makes everything we buy over here?" he asked sarcastically. "So, why no Granholm trade mission over there?"
Mr. Skubick did some checking and found that while the state actually does have an office in China, it is run "by remote control by a person here in Michigan." When he interviewed the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's Greg Main about this, he was told that expanding ties with China is "not a top priority."
Other Michigan leaders think that's a shortsighted attitude. Oakland County, the state's richest area, has been busily building ties to China for years. Earlier this month, Speaker of the House Andy Dillon and Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano traveled to China in search of possibilities. Meanwhile, a number of other legislative leaders, including House Minority Leader Kevin Elsenheimer, went to China at the same time on a separate trip.
What may be worse than the governor's neglect of possible opportunities is her willingness to score political points by attacking China. This seemed to help her win re-election, when she accused her opponent, Dick DeVos, of shipping Michigan jobs there.
Politicians often say outrageous things to get re-elected. What may seem more baffling is that the governor's China-bashing seems to be continuing. In August, as part of a fund-raising appeal for her anointed successor, Lt. Gov. John Cherry, she wrote: "Michigan stands at a crossroads: What kind of state do we want to be in the 21st century? Do we want to be a place where the unemployed suffer while we watch our jobs shipped off on a slow boat to China?"
That type of rhetoric, Mr. Watkins noted, not only fails to create jobs, it makes building ties that much harder. "We must stop attacking them and start building the relationships - 'guanxi' in Chinese - that you need if you are going to do business there."
Whatever your politics, it is hard to see what Michigan has to gain by alienating the fastest-rising economy in the world.
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How good was GM's news? With considerable fanfare, General Motors announced this week that the company is going to start paying off its government loans ahead of time. Officials credited improving sales, lower costs, and a brighter financial outlook.
This caused much rejoicing in Detroit, and to some extent on Wall Street. To be sure, GM's ability to come up with a billion bucks by Dec. 31 is anything but bad news. But closer examination indicates that this isn't exactly the time for what Alan Greenspan once called "irrational exuberance."
The money GM is using to pay the taxpayers back isn't derived from profits. There aren't any profits; the company is still losing money. They are paying back the loan with loan money they hadn't spent yet. That's not to say that this is a bad thing.
In fact, we all need to hope GM's recovery continues, because, well, we own them. The taxpayers own slightly more than 60 percent of the company, to be precise. The goal is for General Motors to get healthy enough that the government can sell its portion and recapture the nearly $50 billion it invested in the recently bankrupt automaker.
Recapture most of it, anyway. Or some of it.
Anyway, we are getting at least a billion back, which is better than nothing.
Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade's ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.
Contact him at: omblade@aol.com
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