State Development Agencies as International Actors and the Decentralization of United States Foreign Economic Policy

Abstract

State development agencies originated to assist in the creation or increase of the industrial and manufacturing bases of the individual states. As these bases grow, they enlarge the number of jobs and increase the tax rolls for both the state and local governments. It was not until the 1960s that these branches of state governments began to direct considerable attention to the international economy. Beginning in the Kennedy administration, the federal government through the Department of Commerce, headed by Luther Hodges, a former Governor of North Carolina, encouraged the states to participate. In the following years, the growth of the international marketing of products and the movements of multinational corporations across national, state and local political borders brought awareness to states of the need to protect as well as to develop their industrial and manufacturing bases. State development agencies began their international efforts with marketing assistance and promotion for products made within their states. Later toward the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, they moved to the attraction of foreign capital investment into the states in the forms of plants, warehousing and sales operations. While scholarly and media attention has focused in recent years on United States multinational corporations marketing and locating in other countries, limited attention has been paid to the reverse effect and the state and local governmental agencies that assist these activities.