Dispatch from China: Slow-selling trinkets

I found it jarring when I visited the famous Buddhist temple in Shanghai (pictures of dignitaries such as Bill Clinton and Nancy Reagan adorn the wall) that there are jade religious symbols in the form of reverse swastikas.

Let's just say these formations are not hot selling trinkets for tourists.

Dispatch from China: Hairy Crabs

In the autumn in Shanghai the delicacy "hairy crabs" is readily consumed by the locals. Some have said that there is a need for American-trained managers and marketing experts. I do not know about the need for expat managers, but a more appealing description of some of the culinary delights would be appreciated.

Another popular offering is stinky tofu, which I believe is an affectionate way to refer to Shanghai, otherwise known as the city above the water.

Dispatch from China: $10 tea

Offended by the $5 cost for a tall Starbucks coffee I decided to go local and visit a famous tea house in Old Town Shanghai.

On my limited budget I passed on the $25 tea and ordered the cheapest item on the menu: a $10 glass pot of jasmine tea. Far more of an experience than a tea bag and boiling water I enjoyed the taste of the jasmine and other herbs in the tea. The tea also came with two bitty boiled eggs (which I did not eat) and three small squares of tofu and some sort of jelly nut (both of which I did consume).

The tea house is an elegant Chinese structure located in the densest part of Shanghai.

In support of free trade agreements

Yesterday, CEO Glenn Hamer sent the letter below to Arizona's Congressional Delegation, urging them to support the pending free trade agreements for Colombia, Panama and South Korea:

I am writing to urge you to make trade expansion a part of America's economic recovery by approving the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. Your support for these job-creating, budget-neutral trade agreements is critical to America's workers, farmers, and companies.

The pending agreements will create tens of thousands of good American jobs and billions of dollars in new exports within a few short years. They will bolster important allies and confirm that America is not ready to cede its global leadership role in trade.

Fundamentally, these agreements are about making trade fair. The U.S. market is largely open to imports from around the world, but other countries continue to slap steep tariffs on our exports. These agreements will create a level playing field for American workers and farmers by eliminating the barriers U.S. exporters face in these three markets.

The agreements are particularly important for America's small and mid-sized companies. More than 280,000 U.S. companies are exporters, and 97% of them are small and medium-sized businesses. Together, they generate nearly one-third of all U.S. merchandise exports. These agreements are especially important for these smaller businesses, which are often shut out of foreign markets by high tariffs and other barriers. In Arizona alone, passage of the South Korean Free Trade Agreement would immediately open the doors to Korea’s $1 trillion economy to industries as diverse as agriculture and aircraft manufacturing.

Other nations are racing to complete their own trade deals with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama and create jobs on their own shores. In the first two weeks after the European Union-Korea Free Trade Agreement entered into force on July 1, European exports to Korea rose 16% while U.S. market share in Korea fell. Ninety percent of Korean tariffs on European imports have already been eliminated. The Canada-Colombia FTA will enter into force on August 15, leaving American businesses further behind in Colombia. A U.S. Chamber study has warned that the United States will lose more than 380,000 jobs and $40 billion in export sales if we delay further.

Now it the time to sharpen America's competitive advantages in the global marketplace by opening growing markets abroad. We urge you to lend your support for approval of the pending trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama.

Sincerely,

Glenn Hamer

President & CEO

Arizona must set up health care exchange before Washington does

There’s a feeling among some in the state Legislature that putting the wheels in motion to establish a health care exchange, as called for by the Affordable Care Act, is somehow tantamount to endorsing the federal health care plan.

But as this Wall Street Journal editorial makes clear, “A posture of indifference is tempting, but it also means an all but certain death warrant for businesses and jobs when HHS eventually takes over.”

That’s because if the states don’t design a health care exchange on their own, then the federal government will do it for them.

Arizona can’t afford to have the Obama administration design a health care exchange from Washington, D.C. If we leave it to the feds, we risk be saddled with an exchange that is bad news for insurers, employers and the insured.

Arizona lawmakers and the health care community should work closely to design a health care exchange. An Arizona-designed health care exchange isn’t an endorsement a federal health care system; it’s recognition that we know better how to design a system for our state than Washington bureaucrats.

Supreme Court matching funds decision a victory for free speech

Today is a great day for the First Amendment.

On a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the matching funds portion of Arizona’s publicly funded elections scheme.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “Arizona’s matching funds scheme substantially burdens political speech and is not sufficiently justified by a compelling interest to survive First Amendment scrutiny.”

The matching funds element of the law was always the most offensive to champions of free speech and of robust, competitive elections. We will not mourn its passing.

Under the matching funds system, publicly funded candidates received a dollar for every dollar their traditionally funded opponent spent over a set monetary cap.

The proponents for publicly funded elections claimed matching funds leveled the playing field. But what matching funds really did was tell traditionally funded candidates, their donors and independent expenditure groups to hit the mute button.

Regarding matching funds’ effect on independent expenditures, the majority writes, “In some ways, the burdens imposed on independent groups by matching funds are more severe than the burdens imposed on privately financed candidates. “

The Court goes on to say, “As a result, those groups can only avoid matching funds by changing their message or choosing not to speak altogether. Presenting independent expenditure groups with such a choice – trigger matching funds, change your message, or do not speak – makes the matching funds provision particularly burdensome to those groups and certainly contravenes the ‘fundamental rule of protection under the First Amendment, that a speaker has the autonomy to choose  the content of his own message.’”

Publicly funded elections are a bad idea, but the matching funds provision made the system even worse.  The death of matching funds is the canary in the coal mine for the whole publicly funded elections scheme, as I’m confident voters in November 2012 will choose to ban the use of public funds for political campaigns entirely.

Glenn Hamer is the president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry

NLRB continues job-killing march

In a post on the National Association of Manufacturers’ Shopfloor blog, NAM VP for Human Resources Policy Joe Trauger writes that the National Labor Relations Board has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to shorten the time for union certification elections.  Says Trauger, “These so-called snap elections are the latest attempt by the NLRB to effectively do for the unions what Congress wouldn’t – stack the deck in their favor.”

The NLRB is racking up points in the business community as the most tone-deaf federal agency.

On the heels of its aggressive action against states with laws guaranteeing a secret ballot in union organizing elections and its blatantly anti-business pursuit of sanctions against Boeing for that company’s establishment of an assembly line in the right-to-work-state of South Carolina, this latest proposed rule by the NLRB is yet another job killer.

If this is the administration’s idea of how to streamline regulations, then it needs to go back to the drawing board.

In all of my conversations with Arizona’s job creators, no one has ever pointed to slow union certification elections as a barrier to making our state more competitive for job growth.

As Trauger writes, “What’s broken in the system they’re trying to fix?  In 2009, labor unions won 68.5 percent of representation elections.  Furthermore, 95 percent of all elections are conducted within 56 days of the filing petition submitted by the union.  In 2010, the average time from filing of the petition to election was 31 days.”

President Obama has called for U.S. exports to double over a five-year period. With his record on labor, though, all we’ll be exporting is jobs.

Glenn Hamer is the president and CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry