The Foreign Service Journal, January 2003

explaining, for example, that when business is slow in the U.S. it may be booming elsewhere, so exports can even out the business cycle. One of the service’s fastest- growing programs is BuyUSA.com , a massive Web site that brings together thousands of U.S. exporters and foreign firms. Says Director General Maria Cino, “I like to call it the Amazon.com of exporting.” BuyUSA.com currently has about 5,000 American seller members and 21,000 foreign buyer members. U.S. firms must pay $400 a year for the service, but for that money they get their own Web presence, part of an active international market. They can also set up a link to their own company’s Web site. Buyer and seller members can easily send inquiries or negotiate by e-mail. The Commercial Service certifies that member com- panies on BuyUSA.com are reliable. Marketing Director Doug Barry points out that this U.S. government role as “an honest broker” helps create confidence among buy- ers and sellers. “They don’t think they’re going to get ripped off.” The service has long had its “Gold Key Program,” which arranges a series of meetings for an American busi- ness person in a foreign city. In a new twist, the Video Gold Key Program can do the same kind of matchmak- ing, but with the American company meeting prospective buyers or partners via videoconference instead of in per- son. CS officers find that this kind of Internet or video con- tact often leads U.S. businesses to take the next step and make personal visits. While the Commercial Service’s mandate emphasizes helping small and medium-size businesses, Cino says, “We also help large businesses like Boeing, Pfizer, John Deere. In China, we deal a lot with compliance” on mat- ters like contracts and shipping problems, she says. While the Commercial Service has generally empha- sized trade promotion, rather than the analysis and reporting more typical of State Department officers, vet- eran FSO Eric Sletten says that he has noticed a change in recent years. In the European Union, he says, “standards and certi- fication issues are really huge issues for exporters” and “the same is true of NAFTA.” He explains, “It’s not driving us away from our core function, but it’s forcing us to define our role more broadly, get into a more analytical function as opposed to a simply promotional function.” Interestingly, while the U.S. government tries in many ways to promote exports, it makes no effort to get U.S. companies to buy American, even though the U.S. trade deficit is running over $300 billion per year. CS trade specialist Erin Butler commented, “It’s a dangerous game for the government to get into playing. It’s one thing to encourage exports, it’s another thing entirely to discourage imports. This administration is committed to the idea of free trade.” How Well Does the Commercial Service Serve? The essential, bottom-line question for the Commercial Service is how well does it do its job? On that, the evidence is mixed but with some strong posi- tives. Gary Litman, the vice president for Europe and Eurasia for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has heard from many companies about their experiences with the FCS. He notes, “It’s very difficult to generalize, because the quality of the people is the main thing. There are some folks who are high-energy, very knowledgeable. But it’s very uneven. There are issues with training and competence.” Litman says that smaller businesses trying to break into new foreign markets find the CS “terrific. ... We hear from companies that for the initial introduction to the market, the FCS people are particularly valuable.” Beyond that, in “matchmaking” for particular deals, “it’s more questionable what the FCS can offer,” he says. Small firms need an unusual combination of luck and perseverance to break into a foreign market, Litman says. “It’s such a random process, they make so many mistakes initially. But FCS can make that less random. You can save a lot of management time if you use FCS.” Litman notes that “the Golden Key program is very highly rated by our members,” though that program is used for the most part by larger businesses. As for the FCS requirement that businesses pay for 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 27 Defending FCS's relevance, one FSO says, “You can click with a mouse, but you can click a lot better with a person.”