Bredesen Launches Export Tennessee 11/03/2005 Governor Phil Bredesen today announced a new export education program called Export Tennessee, which is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses in Tennessee learn more about how they can grow their bottom-line through exporting products to other countries. Export Tennessee is a partnership between the State of Tennessee and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD) will facilitate the partnership with the U.S. Chamber and local chambers across the state by arranging a series of meetings with business owners to help them learn how to identify potential foreign markets and find help navigating the export process. “In this era of open global markets, businesses in Tennessee have two clear choices when it comes to international trade: they can either embrace it and profit from it or they can ignore it,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen. “I clearly believe that learning about the process of exporting Tennessee products to foreign markets is the most beneficial approach for both the health of Tennessee’s economy and for the prospect of creating more jobs in Tennessee.” Joining the governor at the announcement were ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber, Ambassador Gary Quinlan, Deputy Chief-of-Mission from the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C., and Leslie Schweitzer, Senior Trade Advisor for the National Chamber Foundation of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Investment by foreign companies in Tennessee has created jobs for more than 130,000 Tennesseans. The Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which entered into force on January 1 this year, will broaden the commercial ties between us and create new opportunities for Tennessee companies to sell products to Australian consumers. That means there is inevitably going to be more and more Australian investment in Tennessee,” said Ambassador Quinlan. “We have always had shared values and a similar outlook on the world and this FTA will grow and enhance the business interests that we also share together.” At the announcement today, Gov. Bredesen charged ECD Commissioner Matt Kisber to lead a trade mission of small and medium-sized Tennessee companies to Australia next year. According to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce’s Nashville Export Assistance Center, Tennessee is one of the three fastest growing export states in the nation. Australia is Tennessee’s 10th largest trading partner, purchasing nearly $370 million dollars in Tennessee products last year, up more than 60 percent from five years ago. Resources are available for small and medium businesses through the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s TradeRoots program, which promotes the benefits of fair trade and works to remove global trade barriers. Leslie Schweitzer leads the TradeRoots initiative, which is an international grassroots trade education program. “Some business owners have preconceived ideas that exporting and conducting international business is a difficult process,” said Schweitzer. “We want to educate community leaders about the benefits of trading and make it a top-of-mind initiative for small and medium companies throughout Tennessee.” Additional resources are also available at Tennessee’s own Business Enterprise Resource Office (BERO), which offers technical, financial and management information assistance to small and minority-owned companies in Tennessee. In 2004 alone, more than 600 companies used BERO to grow their business. BERO is under the umbrella of services offered at ECD. For more information about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s TradeRoots, visit www.traderoots.org. For more information about Export Tennessee and BERO, visit the ECD Web site at www.state.tn.us/ecd.