Exporter Neal Asbury is on a trade mission

Exporter Neal Asbury operates a Weston company that represents 40 American manufacturers in the commercial food service industry in 130 countries.

He also owns a handful of companies that make commercial and home appliances, everything from heavy-duty mixers to drink dispensers to blenders.

And he just spent millions to buy two iconic companies: Omega, which makes juicers, and Zeroll, whose novel ice-cream scoop earned a place in New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Yet Asbury says he has a more pressing purpose. ''I'm on a mission,'' he says. ``I'm on a mission bigger than running a couple of businesses and making a couple of acquisitions. [I] want to change the world.''

Asbury, president of Greenfield World Trade and the Small Business Administration's reigning National Champion Exporter of the Year, believes fixing global trade inequities that favor other nations would go a long way towards curing the economic ills that now plague the United States.

So he's spends much of his time spreading the word. He writes a regular column for an online news service. He blogs. He pontificates on a weekly radio show now broadcast in six major cities. And he's writing a book tentatively titled Trading Up he says will offer solutions to such problems as unemployment, poverty, failing schools, and a crumbling infrastructure. It's set for release later this year.

''This is fundamental to who I am and where I'm going,'' says Asbury, 51. ``We just can't keep making bad decisions and wasting money and resources and think this country is going to live happily ever after.''

Working for 21 years overseas in the export business representing American companies, Asbury says, gave him a bird's eye view into what he calls a ``corrupt and skewed trading system.''

''Countries like China, India, Brazil, Japan and others routinely manipulate and distort markets to their benefit, and conversely, discriminate against American exporters,'' Asbury charges.

Take KitchenAid, the appliance maker, which Asbury represents overseas. Getting approval from China late last year to sell KitchenAid products took two years of effort, Asbury says.

China requires companies to submit manufacturing drawings and other intellectual property to be able to sell there. That has scared off many manufacturers who are afraid their property rights will be pirated by Chinese companies, Asbury says.

Asbury cites U.S. government's statistics that show intellectual property theft by Chinese companies costs American companies $250 billion a year in lost sales.

''We need to invest in our trade enforcement under the U.S. Department of Commerce, because the magnitude of the problem is so much greater than the manpower that we have working on it,'' he says.

So what does KitchenAid have to say about Asbury's effort on its behalf?

''Neal Asbury is one of our favorite people,'' says Larry Simpson, KitchenAid's export sales manager. ``He just does a lot for KitchenAid. He clearly has our interests high on his list as he works on his many, many projects.''

Asbury didn't start out as an exporter. He was a music major at New Jersey's Rowan State University but decided he didn't want to pursue a music career upon graduating in 1979.

''It just dawned on me that I wanted to be in international trade,'' he says. So he moved to New York and got a job as a mail clerk for an export company. It was a fortuitous decision, even though the company told him he was overqualified.

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/