Found another news article on Butch Otter’s trip.
http://www.idahopress.com/news/state/otter-to-embark-on-trade-trip-to-china/article_042bf63f-bf03-5118-825c-145e5da97622.html
Just to point out a couple of salient points from it:
“Jeff Sayer, director of the Idaho Department of Commerce, said attracting investment isn’t the focus of Otter’s trip this time, but noted that the governor won’t turn down investments based solely on where they come from.”
“Otter notes that federal, state and local laws don’t allow a foreign government to acquire a section of American soil to build an autonomous city.”
That is a complete switch from what we have been reading about this proposed FTZ for the past couple of years. It’s great to hear a state official admit that the proposed FTZ would be illegal.
My interest in the Idaho FTZ involved a new deep water port in WA State that has been connected to the Idaho FTZ. It is being proposed as a coal export terminal, but China has said that they won’t be buying US sub-bituminous coal by the time the terminal is built and there has been talk of it really being used as an import terminal. The reason that the imports are not the main focus is because the present infrastructure and roads would not support an import terminal, not even the RR. Some are conjecturing that they want to build new rail lines through the rural areas of our county, and connect with existing rails that would go to this Idaho FTZ. If they completed this FTZ and made the terminal in WA and FTZ, China would be able to ship anything that they wanted right to Idaho.
So, it sounds as though people are the biggest export that China wants to ship to Idaho at this point. Maybe I wasn’t so far off about them shipping those Nigerian detainees to the US, after all. I was just being facetious.