State official talks tariffs, jobs, economy with San Jose business leaders

SAN JOSE A California executive economics expert has offered San Jose business leaders assurances they can deal with tariffs and other financial turbulence and also sketched a view of a robust commercial sector despite the state s feeble job realm Derek Kirk a top advisor with the California Governor s Office of Business and Economic Expansion a k a GO-Biz appeared Tuesday at a San Jose Chamber of Commerce Power Breakfast one of a series of events featuring influential figures who are pivotal to the business area PG E is presenting the series of events Kirk also touted California s status as the world s th-largest business activity even though California has one of the nation s weakest job markets in a comparison of the nation s states and has lost tens of thousands of jobs so far in The tension between the administrations of Gov Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump was an elephant in the room There s a lot of rhetoric coming out of D C right now stated Kirk referring to the Washington D C -based administration headed up by the president But there also are particular occasional bright spots of collaboration with our federal partners About a month or two ago the Trump administration certified all regional plans for economic maturation in California according to Kirk The certification bolsters California s efforts to develop economic evolution plans for every part of California California s quest to custom-tailor economic advance efforts for regions statewide is part of Gov Newsom s million effort to spur job progress in the state During an interview prior to the presentation Kirk stated that California executive authorities are focused on helping small and large businesses prosper in the state We are focused on ensuring that we can help businesses move at the speed of industry which isn t inevitably the easiest thing to do in California Kirk declared in an interview These efforts include a push to improve the administration of the developer-dreaded California Environmental Quality Act The governor has done a lot the last couple of years to speed up permits to streamline CEQA and to ensure that businesses are able to move and develop and create jobs Kirk declared More than a insufficient critics believe CEQA has hobbled homebuilding and growth projects in California We hear a lot about how California s regulatory regime is too intense too prohibitive Kirk disclosed Generalized business and industry complaints don t offer sufficient guidance in Kirk s view Let s get specific Kirk announced What are the exact permits what are the exact issues that businesses are facing Let s start tackling those and taking one bite of the apple at a time Gov Newsom has signed more than bills to streamline the CEQA process Kirk stated Tariffs are having an impact on specific small businesses in the Bay Area s largest city according to San Jose Chamber of Commerce President Leah Toeniskoetter Toeniskoetter commented she has heard from certain merchants in San Jose s lively Japantown district that tariffs and rising costs for imported items have squeezed their ability to import low-cost products In Japantown small vendors who are importing their goods to sell here at retail announced their biggest challenge is now their costs have gone up Toeniskoetter revealed They are raising prices From what we ve heard from our small businesses they have to raise prices They cannot absorb the cost Despite the rosy depiction of California s financial sector the state s job arena appears to be frail at present To be sure California managed to gain jobs in April according to the majority in recent days available jobs assessment published by the state Employment Expansion Department Yet that one-month upswing wasn t enough to overcome the brutal job realm so far this year an analysis of the state EDD figures show Including the gains in April over the first four months of the state lost jobs the EDD reports show During the January-through-March first quarter of the year California s job performance was so weak that it was ranked No among the states Only Alaska Nevada and Montana had weaker job performances over those three months California s market is incredibly diverse Kirk revealed when petitioned to comment about the state s low ranking in comparison to its peers When appealed in a follow-up question about the job realm specifically Kirk replied California s commercial sector is incredibly unique We continue to work with businesses to ensure that we are supporting their job creation efforts and equally critical to ensure that Californians have access to those jobs