SEATTLE — Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit the Seattle area from Sept. 22-24 Gov. Jay Inslee announced today.
In the mainland United States, Seattle is the closest major metropolitan area to China, so experts say our economies are intertwined.
Locally based Brooks Running makes half its shoes at factories in China, but now the company is looking to sell its shoes to more than 20 million Chinese runners. And that means jobs here.
“We'll need to have more designers, more product managers, more developers that really can focus in on that market,” said Rob Langstaff, the company’s senior vice president for Asia-Pacific.
He was in the audience as other experts in doing business in China were sharing their insights at the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. They included the vice president of marketing for Boeing.
“Today we're building about 42 737s a month. Without China that production rate would be around 28 airplanes a month. So it's critically important to our factories,” Tinseth said.
Boeing seems poised to announce plans to build an aircraft finishing center in China. Tinseth believes that will also spur jobs here.
“When when we can grow as a company through those joint ventures it helps growth here in the Puget Sound, so I think that's very important,” he said,
Add in agricultural products like cherries, and China is Washington's biggest export customer.
The state sold more than $20 billion of goods to China last year, supporting at least 90,000 jobs, said former Washington Gov. Gary Locke.
Locke was also President Obama's Ambassador to China, and he told us why the Chinese president is coming.
“Each country has an interest in a strong economy of the other country and that means jobs for people on both sides of the Pacific,” Locke said.
KIRO
