U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was in the Hudson Valley Monday helping to promote the exporting potential of businesses. New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey joined her as did the head of a government credit agency.
Democratic Senator Gillibrand, a member of President Obama’s Export Council, joined Congresswoman Nita Lowey and Chairman and President of the Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of the United States Fred Hochberg in hosting a roundtable to promote the exporting potential of businesses in Westchester County and the Lower Hudson Valley region.
“The Export-Import Bank is vital to New York businesses,” says Gillibrand. “What it does is allow more access to capital so that businesses have the financing they need to be successful. It helps reduce risk by having insurance products so that you could have an insurance plan if you are exporting goods so you don’t have to worry that you won’t get paid.”
Hochberg adds:
“We provide credit, insurance, loan guarantees to companies, most of them small businesses, 90 percent are small businesses, when they’re selling overseas,” says Hochberg. “Sometimes it’s much harder for a small business to get access to credit, so we step in and fill in that gap.”
He points out that the first step for businesses looking to export is the U.S. Commerce Department. Joan Kanlian is director of the department’s Westchester U.S. Export Assistance Center in White Plains. She says the department is there to help local companies export their products and services.
“We do that by helping them find partners overseas, agents and distributors,” says Kanlian. “We have staff in about 70 countries around the world who are there on the ground as experts to help identify opportunities and identify the information that U.S. exporters would need to explore those new markets.”
Harold King is executive vice president of Newburgh-based The Council of Industry, the non-profit manufacturers’ association for the Hudson Valley.
“We want to support the senator and the congresswoman in their efforts to encourage investment in manufacturing in the Hudson Valley. And the Export-Import Bank has been a vital tool for that going back many years,” says King. “But it’s becoming a more important tool, as our members and The Council of Industry and local manufacturers do more and more exporting it becomes a bigger part of their business.”
He says lots of the manufacturing products from the Hudson Valley go to Canada, the European Union and China.
“Most of our products here are parts of bigger processes,” King says. “So we make what a friend of mine calls ‘goes-intos,’ equipment that goes into other equipment or is used in the process to manufacture.”
Hochberg says there are Westchester businesses and others across the state that could be exporting.
“Well part of the issue is we have a huge market in the United States. This is a very giant market, the largest in the world, so many companies haven’t felt the need to go abroad. But what I find with more and more small businesses I meet is exporting and a global plan is part of their DNA from the day one,” says Hochberg. “So part of what we’re doing here with Senator Gillibrand is making sure more small businesses understand the tools that are available for them so they can tap into global markets.”
Congresswoman Lowey, ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, says EXIM’s guaranteed financing supported $2.2 billion worth of exports and more than 14,000 jobs at 22 exporters – including nine small businesses – from 2007-2014 in her 17th District, which includes parts of Westchester and all of Rockland. The roundtable discussion was held at Magnetic Analysis Corporation in Elmsford, where Hochberg says he was glad to return.
“Today I was excited to come to Elmsford where, as I mentioned, Lillian Vernon where my mother founded, was actually operated here in Elmsford,” says Hochberg.
After stopping in Westchester, Gillibrand and Hochberg visited Binghamton and Rochester to promote export opportunities there.
