WSU News Archive

PULLMAN, Wash. – It just got a lot easier for Washington growers to plan their export strategy, thanks to a new tool developed by the Export Assistance Program at Washington State University. The Export Assistance Program focuses on agriculture and food products and is part of the Washington Small Business Development Center (SBDC) export program.

 

Andrew Cassey, lead researcher with the Export Assistance Program, took information contained in the 2012 Washington State Report on Foreign Trade Barriers to Agricultural Exports and created two searchable, online databases for public use. The portal for the databases is at http://agtradebarriers.wsu.edu/.

 

One database contains information by country and product type about taxes, quotas and other export charges. A second database contains information about more than 30 non-tariff barriers such as pesticide regulations, import licenses, regulatory transparency and product labeling and is also searchable by country and product type.

"It’s a great service,” said Janet Leister, international marketing program manager for the Washington State Department of Agriculture. "Most states don’t have this, especially not online.”

 

Robert Hamilton, Gov. Gregoire’s Advisor for Trade Policy, compiled the report, which has been made available to the public since 1999. The paper report is about 250 pages long, which makes it expensive to distribute and somewhat unwieldy to search.

Cassey, an assistant professor in the WSU School of Economic Sciences, said neither the report nor the databases are concerned with product demand, only with the law and legal issues.

 

Many other factors play into an export strategy, Cassey said, but it’s important to know the legal issues as early as possible. Growers can’t develop an export strategy until they know the rules of the game, Cassey said, and those two databases contain a wealth of information about rules governing agricultural exports.

 

"We think it’s a nice enhancement (of Hamilton’s report) and easy to use,” Cassey said.

 

The Export Assistance Program is a program of the Washington SBDC and involves researchers in the IMPACT Center of the School of Economic Sciences at Washington State University. In addition, the Export Assistance Program receives support from the Washington State Department of Agriculture, the Community Economic Revitalization Board, and the Washington State Department of Commerce.

 

Contact:
Andrew Cassey, cassey@wsu.edu, 509-335-8334

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