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Text of Speech Given by the Honorable Don Maloney, commissioner, City of Holmes Beach
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The following is the text of a speech given by the Honorable Don Maloney, commissioner for the City of Holmes Beach, at the FLC International Academy on April 26, 2003, in Orlando.
While preparing for this talk last night, I was at my desk, my wife Sarah was doing something in the kitchen, and our youngest grandson, Nicholas – for whom we were babysitting, was constantly bugging her about something. Finally, Sarah told him, “go ask your grandfather.” Nicholas snapped back with, “Grandma, I don’t want to know that much about it.”
He’s not my favorite, but you can thank him for cutting down this talk.
I’m far more than just somewhat appreciative of the League for this opportunity they have provided me with this morning to talk about my favorite subject – international relations.
Favorite, because so much of the world’s future depends on coming up with better international relations than we’ve managed to enjoy up to now.
Important, because I believe that the absence of international understanding is the prime cause of the absence of good international relations. There can never be any agreement without understanding, but it’s not all that difficult to have understanding without agreement. Good international relations depend on first understanding – with or without agreement. I hope you understand what I’ve just said – even if you don’t agree.
The second reason I am real anxious to remain involved in international relations after my retirement from business is because I’m a salesman and/or a marketer at heart – as well as a politician – and so. In both of those careers, I don’t like being involved with a loser like I am now. Loser, because again only in the past month I have figures for, the United States – while exporting 80 some billion dollars worth of goods and services, was importing over 120 billion dollars worth of the same.
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What bothers me is that those numbers mean we said goodbye to over 40 billion dollars of ours again that month. That makes us a big loser.
Why did we lose them? And why – in international trade – are we always the loser?
Mainly, I believe, it is our lack of that international understanding I mentioned earlier, and the apparent don’t-give-a-damn attitude about that loss. They, the rest of the world, obviously know what we want and they are quite happy selling it to us. Obviously, we don’t really know – nor have we made enough effort to understand – what they need and/or want. It’s not trade when it’s unbalanced like that.
So where can you and I and other local officials help start working on a better balance? For one thing, you have already started by taking time to be here these past two days. You have already heard from previous speakers how our cities can benefit economically international development; how we in Florida have the perfect location from which to get involved internationally, and what new opportunities exist.
This meeting’s agenda promised that I would tell you what your role is in developing international programs. I believe the League has already spelled out those opportunities by covering things like the Sister Cities Program, by promoting and hosting International Round Tables all around our state, by urging that we all join in the efforts of organizations like the Gulf of Mexico States Accord, by passing along what some other Florida cities are doing to promote international understanding, and by identifying many other ways you can be an active part of all that effort. If you’re not on to all this, call Carol Westmoreland’s office for details. Look through the folder they have already provided you with here today.
Collecting all that will tell you how to get involved, but I’m more anxious to pass on this morning the "Why" you should get involved – at least, why I personally think you should get involved.
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My own interest in international involvement started many years ago when I realized that foreign manufacturers of printing machinery were selling as much, or even more, of their machinery here in the United States than we were selling of ours. And believe me, ours was better.
I became far more than just somewhat anti-international as a result. Japanese manufacturers particularly annoyed me and marketers roaming around our country with their cameras, photographing, it seemed, everything in sight. Obviously, I decided, they were stealing ideas.
Why, I wondered, why were we losing in my part of the international marketplace? Suddenly, after my job took me to the Orient, it came to me: They were busy learning about the international marketplaces with their cameras; but when we were traveling around, we were busy teaching with our slide shows and blackboards because, we believed, we already knew everything about every place. We knew it all and were not about to learn anything. If it was good enough for us, it was good enough for the world. Here’s an example of what I mean:
My company designed and built what I, and many others believed to be the world’s finest newspaper press. While I was living in Japan, where my company sent me to set up joint ventures in both manufacturing and marketing, the home office directed me to put serious efforts together in order to sell our newspaper press over there. It turned out that the printing area sizes of our presses – satisfactory in North and South America and Europe could not print newspapers the size Japanese were settled on. I told the U.S. that we would have to change the sizes of our presses to succeed there. They telexed back, I saved it, “The Japanese will have to change the size of their newspapers.”
We never sold a newspaper press there. The Germans did. And it wasn’t only my American company who thought they knew it all.
One time, on a plane ride from Hong Kong back to Tokyo; I was seated next to the vice president of design for one of our prime American automobile manufacturers. These were days when America was turning out little cars like the Henry J, the Nash Rambler, Ford and others made those sizes, too. They were all buried by little Japanese Nissans and Toyotas. Because of his position, I couldn’t resist asking my companion: What happened? It happened, he said, because we, the Americans, knew the country wanted a little car. But, he admitted, we didn’t know they wanted a great little car with all the pluses our big cars had. The rest is history.
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It was that conversation that led me to work on developing joint ventures in Japan rather than trying to go it alone on soil I really didn’t understand. We still had plenty of problems, but nearly all resulted from our American reluctance to admit there was something we didn’t know.
Sharing knowledge and ownership paid off. We began producing products the Japanese wanted and could use, not just shoving our desires on them. We failed with those little automobiles of ours as well as with many other products because we have a tendency to do what we know how to do.
Where foreigners beat us is where they give us what we want. I really enjoyed my Monday morning meetings with the Japanese CEO of our joint venture partner. One meeting in particular will always remain in my memory. He asked me that day as he always did, what I thought my current biggest problem was in the joint venture. He knew what it was but was anxious to hear what I thought it was. I said that day that my problem was financing our customers. Our machines were very expensive and Japanese printers wouldn’t pay more than 12.8 percent interest on our five-year terms. The Bank of Japan set interest rates back then because of the OPEC oil embargo that year at 15.4 percent. Obviously, that meant I had to borrow at 15.4 percent to pay for importing our machines from the U.S. and then loan that money to customers at only 12.8 percent. Even though I’m not a CPA, I knew that made little or no sense.
So he asked me why that was a problem. There was no way we could cut the Bank of Japan rate below the 15.4 percent. They own all the money. And no way, because of rates competitors were charging, could we get customers to pay more than 12.8 percent on their time payments.
He then said he was about to reluctantly give my American business brain some advice. Advice I’ve never forgotten: When there is no alternative, there is no problem. Americans, he said, spend too much time hunting for solutions that don’t exist. I for one don’t do that anymore. I also learned from him that the easiest way to beat the other guy, or country, is to attack them in their strongest area. That’s because that’s where it’s likely they are asleep with their success. That tactic worked with the Japanese where they out did us in our automobiles, on the Swiss in their watches because people wanted to know what time it was, not how many jewels the watches had, on the Germans with their cameras and audio equipment by making them easy, not complicated and on and on.
And so, I hope I’ve made my "why" clear. If you think about how well listening works here in our country, at FLC meetings for instance, just imagine how well it can work internationally.
If world peace is ever to be accomplished, it can only happen, as I said earlier, with understanding.
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