Time to Reshuffle the Export Deck Chairs?

There's a plum job opening in President Barack Obama's Cabinet, with plenty of global travel and face time with corporate executives. Except there's a hitch: No one is quite sure what the shape of the agency will be or how long its leader will be addressed as "Mr. Secretary."

Obama has set an ambitious goal to double exports by 2015—and getting there may require taking a wrecking ball to the current unwieldy U.S. export bureaucracy. Gary Locke's departure as Obama's Commerce Secretary creates a vacancy in the department at the center of the export push. Whether Commerce emerges as the hub of the Administration's export promotion efforts—or becomes a casualty of the reorganization—hasn't been determined. This uncertainty complicates the Administration's challenge of finding a replacement for Locke, who will become U.S. Ambassador to China, pending Senate confirmation. Bloomberg News reported Mar. 9 that Google's outgoing chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, and Pfizer's former CEO, Jeffrey Kindler, are being considered for Commerce Secretary.