Instead, she met savvy businessmen working to transform her home country of Colombia.
Roy Ferguson came expecting miles of farmland.
Le Cong Phung came all the way from Vietnam expecting to meet an isolated people - a state landlocked both physically and intellectually.
But he was delighted to find “a population reaching out to the world. If we have the will, and understand each other,” Phung said, “then we can work together.”
Which is mighty important, because working together - this business of international trade - “opens not only the path to prosperity, but also the path to peace. After all, you don't want to go out and pick a fight with the people you do business with.”
So said Webb Brown, president of the Montana Chamber of Commerce. Brown was in Kalispell on Wednesday, playing host to the world along with U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.
For the past week, Baucus has been traveling Montana with some powerful international friends. Barco, ambassador of Colombia. Ferguson, ambassador of New Zealand. Phung, ambassador of Vietnam. Felipe Ortiz De Zavallos, ambassador of Peru. Aziz Mekouar, ambassador of Morocco.
The rustic road trip has been, Baucus said, a true taste of Montana, from his Helena ranch to Butte and Hamilton and Wisdom and Missoula, on up through the Flathead Indian Reservation to Kalispell.
“Traveling with these distinguished ambassadors in our beautiful state,” Baucus said, “I thought of previous famous trips in America's mountains.”
Trips like those some 90 years back, through the Smokies and the Adirondacks, when Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone camped their way across a wilderness of entrepreneurial adventures. Sometimes, the president even came along.
Ford built little dams across streams, measuring power output. Edison cracked open rocks with a small hammer, curious about what might be inside.
Together, they joined Firestone in exploring which plants might contain latex, and discussed America's growing demand for rubber.
The trips through the mountains, Baucus said, were an inspiration of personal relationships, collective inventiveness and future business. And like Edison and friends, when Baucus and the ambassadors tripped through Montana, “we were inspired by it.”
They ate bread with their beef and discussed Montana's exports of wheat, barley and cattle. They saw miles of farmland end at a cellulosic ethanol plant. They explored biotechnology in the Bitterroot Valley, and electronics on the reservation.
They visited the University of Montana and marveled at an educational exchange agreement with Vietnam.
And mostly, they became friends.
“It was about understanding each other better,” Baucus said of the week's journey. “And it was about imagining a better future.”
It's a future, in some ways, that already is here.
Some two-thirds of Montana's grain is grown for export. U.S. trade is up 700 percent with Vietnam, just since 2001. Exports from the United States to Morocco increased 65 percent from 2006 to 2007. Montana's exports to Colombia have grown more than 200 percent since 2003.
The Big Sky state exported $887 million in manufactured goods to the world in 2006, doubling its exports between 2002 and 2006. Agricultural exports totaled $520 million in 2005.
International trade is tremendously important, even in states such as Montana, Baucus said, because 96 percent of the world's consumers live somewhere else.
A full 98 percent of GTC Technology's revenue comes from overseas. They're based in Bozeman.
Missoula's Milky Whey Inc. pulled in $33 million last year, with one-third coming from international trade.
Kalispell's Timberline Tool sells in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia, France, Belgium and the United Kingdom, as well as the Flathead Valley.
“Montana is not an island unto itself,” Brown said. “We already trade with the world.”
And it appears the world wants more.
“We want to import from you,” Phung said. “Milk, beef, agriculture. Anything you can sell to Asia, we're ready to buy.”
It's a message Montana business ignores at its own peril, Baucus said.
Much of the state's burgeoning international trade, he admits, has been made possible by free trade agreements, deals that cut through tariffs and bureaucratic restrictions. Of course, those agreements also come at a price - domestic jobs lost overseas.
“It's a fact that international trade creates jobs for Montana,” Baucus said. “But it's also true that some workers lose their jobs.”
That, he said, “is why I am pushing the greatest expansion of trade adjustment assistance since its creation in 1962.”
The federal program helps displaced workers with skills training, health care coverage, even grants for entire communities that lose critical industries.
It's always been a give and take. The United States sells Colombia barley and wheat, and Colombia sells the United States coffee and bananas and fresh flowers in the dead of winter. And for every Colombian flower grower that exchange supports, two jobs are created in the U.S., transporting and retailing the flowers.
International trade has arrived, Baucus said. It can neither be ignored nor denied. Instead, he advocates a far more aggressive approach to tearing down barriers, coupled with a substantial safety net to catch those negatively affected.
“In an otherwise gloomy economy,” Baucus said, “exports are a bright spot for America and for Montana.”
And companies looking to capitalize suddenly find they have lots of options. Both the federal and state departments of commerce have programs for business owners, and Missoula's Montana World Trade Center also can work as a sort of “marriage broker” between locals and their far-flung global neighbors.
“They can help you target markets,” said Liz Reilly, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “and they can hook up the connections, and answer the questions.”
How to find a buyer, how to ensure payment, how to protect intellectual property, how to weather foreign politics.
The United States has a great reputation for quality, and there's a huge demand for our goods. she said. The most popular car in China, she said, is a Buick.
And with states competing against each other for the expanding export market, Reilly advises Montana businesses to follow up fast on the friendships brokered by Baucus.
“Every one of these ambassadors told Montana their door is open,” she said. “It would be a mistake not to knock.”
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