How to win away gains in major-league exports.

• Position: Interview with North Carolina State associate professor of business management John Dutton - Interview

John Dutton is an associate professor of business management at N.C. State. He teaches international business and tracks the state's exports with the Wachovia North Carolina World Trade Index.

BNC: Explain last year's slowdown in export growth, to 4.4%?

Saudi Arabia stopped buying a lot of transportation equipment. A variety of industries didn't do as well as we would have hoped, like industrial machinery.

BNC: Do industries get hot, then cool off?

There's a lot of that. In pulp and paper, prices can drop and the value of exports drops. Emerging markets also tend to be fairly volatile. Japan is very volatile in its tobacco buying from one quarter to the next. They'll buy less or ship from a different state, Georgia or Virginia. Transportation was down, and other industries we rely on were lackluster.

BNC: Will exports recover this year?

The first quarter was about the same as last year. The second quarter will likely be similar.

BNC: Did some markets underperform?

One dog that didn't bark was Japan. Its economy has been in disarray. Their growth policies didn't work over the long run, and there was a huge bubble in the stock and real-estate markets. The bubble burst. Ever since, they've been trying to deal with the fact that their system is not very flexible. They've got too many regulations. They tend to turn things over to bureaucrats, let them intrude pretty far into business dealings. Until they overcome that, they're going to have problems.

TOP DESTINATIONS 1996 N.C. exports (in millions) 1995-96 change Canada $4,149 11.9% Japan 1,656 (0.5) Saudi Arabia 1,069 (29.8) Mexico 968 7.4 United Kingdom 921 14.4 Germany 785 (1.6) Belgium/Luxembourg 695 6.3 Netherlands 498 (0.1) Brazil 345 8.9 China 321 51.6

BNC: Despite last year, North Carolina's long-term export progress is remarkable.

Yeah. The rate was 12.9% a year for a decade. The comparable U.S. rate is 10.9%. Manufacturing, in industries such as chemicals and transportation equipment and others, has just done well. We haven't had Silicon Valley, but we've had a strong concentration of software companies and growth industries.

TOP EXPORT INDUSTRIES 1996 N.C. exports (in millions) 1995-96 change Industrial machinery $3,246 4.3% Chemicals, allied products 2,009 26.4 Electronics, electrical equipment 1,593 13.3 Transportation equipment 1,588 7.4 Textile-mill products 1,304 17.4 Apparel, other textiles 1,223 6.8 Crops 1,185 2.3 Tobacco 973 (9.4) Primary metal industries 750 33.1 Paper...