Dec. 8, 2005
 
COMMENTARY: West Virginia: America’s Switzerland?
 
By David M. Kinchen
Editor, Huntington News Network
 
Hinton, WV (HNN) – A couple of years ago, I believe, I made a case for West Virginia transforming itself into a Switzerland inside of America. When the laughter died down, there were many people who wondered if I had finally gone ‘round the bend, as the Brits say.
 
My point was that 150 years ago, Switzerland was a backwater, a rural country that was rapidly exporting its population to places like Wisconsin because there were few opportunities for its citizens to find work in the tiny mountainous country that’s not even as large as West Virginia.
 
Today, of course, the nation of 7.5 million people in just over 15,000 square miles is a world center of engineering, pharmaceuticals, quality watch manufacturing and producers of some of the best – and priciest – machine tools in the world. Swiss quality is a byword. This is from the U.S. State Dept.: “Swiss companies play a major role in world export markets for such high value-added products as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, watches, specialty machinery, and gourmet foods such as chocolates and cheeses. Swiss banks and insurance companies are major players on the world scene, and these sectors, together with tourism, help compensate for Switzerland's usually negative balance of trade.” On top of all this, the nation has an unemployment rate half that of neighboring Germany.
 
West Virginia has long been noted for its glass industry in places like Milton and Williamstown. The Toyota plant in Putnam County ranks at the very top of the Japanese manufacturer’s quality list, exceeding many of the plants in Japan itself. There’s a thriving specialty steel industry up in the Northern Panhandle and pharmaceuticals and chemicals are among the state’s quality products. Tourism is a major factor in our state, with four-season tourism a reality thanks to the best skiing in the Southeast. We’re a sparsely populated state smack dab in the middle of the nation’s largest population concentration.
 
With the completion of the Hinton Technology Center and similar developments elsewhere in the Mountain State, we’re keeping up with state-of-the-art high tech competitors everywhere in what New York Times columnist and author Tom Friedman calls the “Flat World.” We have excellent colleges and universities with enrollments small enough so that students can get instruction from real professors, not teaching assistants.
 
The latest positive note in West Virginia’s transformation into America’s Switzerland – my hope, at least – is the FAA’s certification of a corporate jet built in Martinsburg, WV, the Sino Swearingen SJ30-2, the “first totally new American corporate jet designed from scratch and manufactured in 45 years,” according to U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, a man responsible for keeping the SJ30-2 project on track after the pullout of an American partner.
 
The certification means that Sino Swearingen can begin filling the hundreds of orders it has for the jet from around the world, bringing hundreds of high-paying, high-skilled jobs to West Virginia, according to Rockefeller, who used his Asian contacts to secure a Taiwanese partner to make aircraft designer Ed Swearingen’s dream a reality.
 
Rockefeller isn’t exaggerating when he says: “Today, the words ‘Made in West Virginia’ apply to not only automobile engines, chemicals, biometric technologies, cutting edge research, beautiful arts and crafts, but also to the newest generation of jet airplanes that will become the gold standard for general aviation around the world. Today, West Virginia can boast that we are home to a global aviation company with advanced orders on its planes and down payments worth more than $1.3 billion dollars. It will take this plant a full three years just to fill these orders.”
 
It’s my hope that when other manufacturers see what can be done here in the Mountain State, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t become America’s Switzerland. We even have a town, Helvetia, with Swiss roots. Just like high-tech Wisconsin’s New Glarus!