An Expanding World = A Safer World

I'm sure that when it comes to personal political persuasions, Tradeshow Week readers are all over the map. But when you talk business, tradeshow business, don't try to deny it: You're all Bush Republicans.

That's why you probably liked President Bush's first State of the Union address in 2001 when he harped away on tax cuts, economic development and enhanced world trade – and devoted all of four paragraphs to the subject of national security.

But a lot has changed since then, and his most recent State of the Union speech on Jan. 20 reflects that. While Bush hasn't completely forgotten about the nation's business community, it's clear he knows its agenda is not what's going to get him reelected. I know, I know: We still live in a post-Sept. 11 world, which has hit the tradeshow industry as hard as it's hit almost anybody.

Even now as we are supposedly in the middle of the beginning of the first stage of an economic revival, the residue of the terrorist attacks still affects everybody. U.S. show managers have more trouble than ever making sure their foreign exhibitors and attendees get the visas they need to visit their shows; show managers like Peter Nathan can't get U.S. State Department approval to reprise the shows he did so safely and successfully in Cuba a mere year ago; and now exhibitors at food shows have to worry about FDA restrictions on shipping products into the United States because of the threat of bioterrorism.

Criticism of this state of affairs by exhibition industry organizations has been uniformly cautious, tentative and tempered with introductory sentences like, "We are as concerned as anybody about national security, but ..." What lobbying efforts have been made, have been virtually useless. As good as it's gotten is Consumer Electronics Assn. CEO Gary Shapiro testifying before a congressional committee in June, to no avail.

So, clearly, the strategy of being "understanding" about national interests while pointing out the impact on business travel and the exhibition industry doesn't work. Maybe somebody needs to suggest to Bush and the rest of the federal government that closing the United States off from the rest of the world doesn't necessarily make it any safer.

One of the great promises of all U.S. business interests, not just tradeshow managers, is the ever-widening global economy. Opening foreign markets to American entrepreneurs and vice versa (which is what tradeshows do) doesn't just make money for the parties involved, it transfers American values to parts of the world where they're now viewed from afar with great suspicion. There are plenty of examples of commerce, the search for new markets, motivating events that change human history. (Ever hear of Marco Polo? Christopher Columbus? Horace Greeley?)

The world is safer – not more dangerous – if people are freely moving back and forth from one country to the next, doing business with one another and exchanging ideas. In 2004, that perhaps is the case to be made for loosening restrictions on visas, freeing up the flow of food products headed for the United States and putting a stop to U.S. State Department bans on tradeshow entrepreneurs doing business in countries the Bush Administration doesn't necessarily approve of.