We have concluded the final leg of our peace and trade mission in Taiwan. The Taiwan mission was a complete success.

Taiwan is a very important trading partner for Vermont, ranking third behind Canada and South Korea, and bringing in nearly $330 million yearly to our state. Our exports to Taiwan increased more than 70% from 2001 to 2002. Vermont may be small, but we rank right behind Arizona in the top ten exporting states to Taiwan -- selling everything from computer chips, from IBM in my home town in Essex, to Green Mountain Coffee from Waterbury, to aircraft system components from B.F. Goodrich in Vergennes, to environmental clean-up equipment and know-how from Clean Earth Technologies in North Ferrisburg.

One reason we went to Taiwan was to help Vermont companies currently doing business there, as well as those interested in starting to do business there. Equally important, to me, was for Vermont to build relationships that would contribute in some small way to world peace.

Our first meeting in Taiwan occurred shortly after we checked into our hotel. Several of us met with parents of students from Taiwan who are currently enrolled at Lyndon Institute. Before we left for Asia, I had the pleasure of showing these students around our State House. As we met with their parents, at one point Mr. Curtis Picard from the Vermont Chamber of Commence asked them why they had chosen Vermont as a place to educate their children.

The parents replied that first and foremost, Vermont is a safe place to send their children. They added that Lyndon Institute offers a quality education that represents a good value for their hard earned dollars. We also met with some education counselors whose job it is to recruit students for our Vermont schools. I expressed our pleasure at having these overseas students in our state.

Later in our trip, we toured an all-girls junior high and high school, as well as a university, where I talked with their leaders about starting an exchange program between Vermont schools and their counterparts in Taiwan. But the atmosphere in this high school was so positive that I had to ask one of the teachers what the secret of their success is.

She looked me in the eyes and said simply this: discipline and love; both are necessary for learning to take place. Our visit to this truly outstanding school was in many ways the highpoint of our entire mission.

Education, and a positive vision for our children, is critical for our success here in Vermont. My experience in this Taiwan school inspired me to promote the same qualities in our schools – to foster learning in an environment of love and discipline.

During our four days in Taiwan, we met with companies and customers responsible for paying the salaries for many hard working Vermonters.
We met with the Vice President of General Electric who is in charge of GE Rutland. He told Commerce Secretary Kevin Dorn and me just how important GE Rutland is to GE’s success selling turbine engines in Asia and around the world. I also talked with a Boeing Aircraft VP about the importance to Boeing of companies like Goodrich Aerospace, and 24 other Vermont companies that supply Boeing in excess of $30 million dollars of parts and services every year. We met with current and prospective customers of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. We met with existing and prospective clients of Clean Earth Technologies and learned how this Vermont company is helping to clean up Asia. During our trip the Vermont Environmental Consortium also landed a contract to provide environmental engineering services to a large Taiwanese company.

We toured a software park in Taipei, where we visited a company called Destiny, which is a large customer of IBM Essex. They buy IBM chips produced in my hometown of Essex. They embed their own software into the IBM chips, which in turn go into computer printers that are used all over the world. Secretary Dorn and I talked with the Destiny’s president about the merits of opening Vermont office, where they could develop their software closer to their key partner, IBM. We will continue this discussion, with the goal of building opportunity for Vermonters.

In addition to its job-growing and educational aspects, this peace and trade mission gave me an opportunity to hold personal meetings with Taiwan’s leaders. Representing Governor Jim Douglas and the people of our state, I met with President Chen, Vice President Lu, and Premier Yu, and toured their legislature. As Chair of the Governor’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, I also requested and received an excellent briefing from Taiwan’s Center for Disease Control concerning their response to SARS and the lessons they learned. I will brief Governor Douglas on this report and also share it with our Department of Health.

We attended the first ever Taiwan Business Alliance and were the only state trade delegation represented. Our presence allowed us to forge new partnerships.

I made it a point use every possible opportunity to explain how important it is to protect the intellectual property of Vermont companies. From small companies like Hubbardton Forge to large ones like IBM, protection of proprietary designs is critical, and increasingly so as we move toward a Creative Economy. IBM knows this so does its Taiwan partner Destiny. Hubbardton Forge’s president wrote to me that he can compete against any company in the world – but not if Hubbardton’s designs are stolen and produced in Asia. I stated repeatedly to both government and business officials that stealing Vermont designs is unacceptable.

Another of our objectives was to raise the Vermont’s visibility Taiwan, in a positive way, and to raise the profile of the Vermont Chamber of Commence representative who works there on our behalf.

And we succeeded. Our delegation was on the evening news three times in four days. We were featured on the front page of Taiwan’s leading newspaper, with more than four million papers in print. This greatly raised our visibility and the effectiveness of our trip.

We all worked very hard on the Taiwan portion of our trade mission. Our entire trip to Asia was a complete success. We expanded educational, governmental and business relationships. We signed new business contracts and generated many new leads that will be developed in the future – and which in time should add up to new opportunities and better jobs for Vermonters. It has been a privilege to represent my state on this important mission.