By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Anyone doubting the importance of international trade to South Carolina’s economy should consider the remarks of Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Karen Lezny.

During her keynote speech at the April 11 Charleston Women in International Trade banquet, Lezny pointed out that Palmetto State companies with fewer than 500 employees conduct more than 81% of South Carolina’s international trade.

Put another way, many of our small- and mid-sized businesses—South Carolina’s economic backbone—thrive from importing and exporting.

Lezny, a trade negotiator for the Washington, D.C.-based Free Trade Area of the Americas, devoted to spreading free trade throughout the Western hemisphere, also noted that the export industry accounts for 10.5% of South Carolina’s employment.

Here’s another statistic, courtesy of the South Carolina Department of Commerce: In 2005, South Carolina companies exported $13.94 billion worth of products to 194 countries—a 4.25% increase over the previous year’s export figures.

Those numbers probably wouldn’t be as fat as they are if not for CWIT, the South Carolina chapter of the Organization of Women in International Trade, a worldwide association.

CWIT has about 100 active members who hold jobs in finance, public relations, government, international law, freight forwarding, agriculture, sales and marketing, import/export, logistics and transportation. It’s a nonprofit organization that provides educational and networking opportunities for folks in international trade. And despite its name, quite a few active members of CWIT are men.

CWIT got its OWIT charter in 2002, but the roots of the Charleston organization go back farther than that.

During the banquet, Jackie Adamson, CWIT’s 2006 Woman of the Year, pointed out that the organization’s seed was planted back in the late 1960s in the form of the Women’s Transportation Club of Charleston, a professional trade organization for logistics experts, freight forwarders and others in the business of transporting cargo. Adamson is a former president of that defunct organization.

Why a women’s transportation club? Because in those silly days, the Transportation Club of Charleston was a boys-only outfit. The ladies not only formed their own club but one-upped the guys in terms of class and brains by refusing to discriminate against men.

About 150 people attended CWIT’s Charleston Place banquet, in which Adamson and others were honored. Ann Watts, director of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Export Assistance Center in Columbia and CWIT’s chairperson for the past two years, passed the torch (or the chair) to Pam Everitt, information technology director for the South Carolina State Ports Authority.

CWIT has come a long way indeed from the Women’s Transportation Club of Charleston days. Our business climate is sunnier for it.

HOUSING HOPE. “Inclusionary zoning” is an affordable housing strategy requiring developers of large projects to sell or rent a small percentage of housing units at less than market value. As a reward for doing this, developers get some government breaks, such as permission to build more units than were originally approved.

In 1974, Montgomery County, Md., became the first community in the nation to install inclusionary zoning. More recently, Tallahassee, Fla., adopted that housing strategy, followed by Orlando, Fla., in March. More than 200 U.S. communities—including Fairfax County, Va., touted as the nation’s wealthiest—have some sort of inclusionary zoning.

It’s a controversial subject. A lot of developers don’t like government-mandated housing. And many homeowners worry that inclusionary zoning would increase their property taxes to compensate for their neighborhood’s less expensive homes.

But considering the Lowcountry’s skyrocketing home prices ($282,652 was the average home sales price in 2005, the Charleston Trident Association of Realtors tells us) and stagnant wages ($32,780 is the average annual salary in the Charleston-North Charleston area, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), inclusionary zoning is a topic well worth studying.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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