State governors delve into foreign diplomacy

SANTA FE» State governors discussed ways Thursday to court foreign investment in the wake of President Donald Trump’s trade disputes with countries including China, Canada and Mexico.

Several of the more than 20 governors attending the annual meeting of the National Governors Association said shifting U.S. trade policies are rattling markets for agricultural commodities and complicating decisions by foreign investors.

“It gets damaging when you get into these very frictional relationships where people are trying to measure this tariff or that tariff,” said Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. “I’m not saying the previous system was fair.”

Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he is sending the state’s economic development director on an additional trip to China this year to meet with companies that are making investments in his state, amid concerns about deteriorating U.S.-China trade relations.

“It’s important that we look for a solution very quickly so that we don’t have an increase in tariffs and escalate the tariff war, as some would describe it,” said Hutchinson, who is running for a second term this year.

Brookings Institution Fellow Joseph Parilla said governors don’t decide U.S. trade policy but can engage in direct economic diplomacy to encourage investment, while funding things like education and research at home.

“They’re certainly not helpless,” he said. “They can increasingly conduct economic policy themselves.”

In Washington on Thursday, Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts ran into opposition from automakers, dealers and suppliers. Opponents of the new trade restrictions lined up to vent as the Commerce Department held a hearing on whether auto imports pose a threat to U.S. national security.