The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

often raise — that the Commercial Service is moved too much by politi- cal factors and not enough by strictly economic export considerations. In a way, that criticism can be made of the Commerce Department as a whole. One senior commercial officer told the Journal , “Ever since the Nixon administration, the secre- tary of Commerce has usually been the president’s chief fund-raiser, maybe on the assumption that that person has good ties to business. And then, Commerce always gets more than its share of political appointees. Since they can’t easily be put in the technical agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lots of them wind up work- ing in international trade.” Stephen Craven, a veteran officer who until recently was director of the service’s Rocky Mountain and Southwest Region, says that the political presence has “both pluses and minuses. A minus is that it gives us a layer of amateurs in several of the top positions. Proportionally, we have more political appointees than State.” But, Craven says, that proportion is smaller now than it was a few years ago. “Very often those political appointees come in with their own agendas, such as promoting diversity or assist- ing in election campaigns,” Craven says. “But some have become dedicated to the mission of the [Commercial] Service.” “As with a political ambassador,” Craven says, “it’s tough to predict beforehand. They are more likely to be subject to political whims. But on the plus side they may have strong contacts on the Hill.” Regarding a related criticism — that too often the Commercial Service opens offices for political rather than export-related reasons — Craven says, “It’s undeni- able that this has happened. We opened a number of posts in Central Asia, the former Soviet Union” as politi- cal statements. The Commercial Service has also opened offices in the United States because of political pressures from the Hill, Craven says, “but those are a small minority of our domestic offices.” Cino is optimistic about the prospects for U.S. exports. She notes that for eight years — from 1994 to 2002 — the U.S. president did not have “fast- track” trade promotion authority. Since President Bush now has that power again, Cino says she expects that a number of new preferential trade agreements or free trade agreements will soon help American exporters. Similarly, prospects for the Commercial Service look good. But a number of short-term and long-term factors could threaten the work of the service. Those include the rising role of the Internet and electronic commerce, the difficult security/terrorism environment, and a huge budget hit on the service that may be looming just over the horizon. A Budget Bombshell Like many federal agencies, the CS runs on a tight budget, and often has to shift staff and resources to meet urgent needs. Its annual budget is relatively stable, run- ning about $170 million per year. Imagine the agency’s surprise, then, when it was recently told by the State Department and the Office of Management and Budget that it might be required to contribute more than $40 million per year for upgrading of embassy buildings. Noel Negretti, director of the Commercial Service’s Office of Planning, does not like the idea. He points out that State has a plan to build new consulates and embassies at a cost of $1.4 billion a year. “Rather than ask for that directly from Congress, they want to allocate the cost of those buildings across all the agencies that are overseas. For the first year it would go into full effect, fis- cal 2006, we would be asked to provide $48 million. This year we’re being asked for $9 million. “The way they put it is, you can ask for it every year from the Congress. Of course we can ask for it,” Negretti says with pained laughter, “but asking isn’t necessarily receiving.” Carlos Poza, the deputy director general and an FSO, argues that State should bear the responsibility, since it has absorbed the U.S. Information Agency and “is now clearly the predominant Foreign Service agency.” He adds, “It’s a terrible precedent. It’s taking trade promo- tion funds and putting them into building buildings.” Director General Cino agrees that “the fact that we would be involved in the building of embassies and the F O C U S J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 The U.S. Commercial Service, an unusual hybrid of domestic and Foreign Service components, seems to grow more popular every year.