Earlier this week, the Washington Council on International Trade (WCIT) and the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle (TDA) released “An International Competitiveness Strategy for Washington State.” The really interesting part of the strategy is its update of the “one in three jobs in Washington are trade-related” statistic (which dates to 1999). Now, according to the paper, “at least 40% of all jobs in Washington can be tied to trade-related activity.”

It is important to remember that exports aren’t the only beneficial aspect of trade. As the paper reports,

For Washington state, imports are linked to job creation; in fact, 25% of all trade-related jobs are tied to imports.This is because of two significant factors: 1) our status as an international gateway to the rest of the country, and 2) the fact that we are home to a wide diversity of retail and manufacturing companies that leverage global supply chains as part of their market competitiveness. As a gateway for Asian goods, our state has tens of thousands of people who are engaged in the logistics of taking imported freight off of ships and airplanes and then transporting it to the rest of the country. The greater the percentage of goods coming to the United States from Asia that pass through our state’s ports, the more jobs that are created in our state.

Many Washington manufacturers and retailers also rely on imported goods to maintain their international competitiveness. [emphasis mine]

As a September paper from the Heritage Foundation puts it, “The reality is that the increased economic activity associated with every stage of the import process helps support American jobs.”

Another interesting piece of the WCIT/TDA paper is its inclusion of exports of services along with exports of goods. When you consider only goods, Transportation Equipment has the highest export value ($28.1 billion), followed by Agricultural Products ($11.4 billion). Including services, Computer Software and IT Services moves in to second place ($13.0 billion).

Additionally, the paper makes a good broader point:

we cannot rely on past accidents of fate to ensure that our state will continue to be the home for such a wide array of successful global enterprises. Washington must stay vigilant to maintain our competitiveness in a global economy in which other regions are continually offering lower costs and higher incentives to attract and retain businesses and talented employees.