Georgia’s export growth

International trade is vital to maintaining and increasing jobs and investment in Georgia. Exports create twice as many jobs as domestic trade. For every job created in making a product, another is created getting the product to an international market. In fact, more than one-fifth of manufacturing workers in Georgia depend on exports for their jobs. When looking at imports and exports, more than 300,000 jobs in our state can be attributed to international trade and our ports.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development’s International Trade Division works zealously to encourage exports. Still, it isn’t enough to simply work inside Georgia to promote exports. We now have international trade representatives in eleven markets covering 37 countries who seek business opportunities for our state.

Each year, we evaluate our international trade contractors by looking at their performance as well as ensuring the locations of the contracts are appropriate for our state. We also consider external factors, such as countries in which the U.S. has Free Trade Agreements, as they help reduce and eliminate tariffs on U.S. goods in those markets.

The U.S. has five trade agreements in the Americas that cover 11 countries: NAFTA (Mexico, Canada), CAFTA-DR (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica) Peru, Panama and Colombia. Georgia companies are taking advantage of these agreements. In 2013, approximately 36 percent of Georgia’s exports were to the Americas. Generally speaking, this region is highly receptive to U.S. products and services.

Recently, we announced new international trade representatives for Mexico and Colombia, making Georgia the first state to have full-time trade representation in Colombia. (This team expands Georgia’s representation in the Americas from Canada, Mexico, Chile and Brazil. Georgia also has representatives in continental Europe — based in Germany — the United Kingdom and Ireland, Israel, Korea, Japan and China.)

Based on an increased demand for export assistance in the Americans, the state looked at expanding its Mexico contract to include Mexico plus another free trade agreement country. While many strong opportunities were identified with Panama, Peru and Colombia, Colombia was selected as the best match for Georgia. Colombia is currently Georgia’s second-largest South American and third-largest Latin American export market.

Having increased exposure in Latin America provides more opportunities for Georgia companies. Even more so, we were able to accomplish this without increasing costs to the state.