COEUR d'ALENE - U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick had his first encounter with international trade in the seventh grade, he says.

As he helped load a truck of wheat on his family's Walla Walla farm, his father told him the crop would be shipped from Portland to Iran and China.

"He said, 'Those countries can't feed themselves, and if we can sell it to them, the price of wheat is a lot better,'" Minnick said. "The years that we had a good harvest and the people of China were hungry, my dad would buy a new pickup and we would go skiing. That was my first introduction to the local impact of international trade."

There's no reason any Idaho business can't benefit from doing the same, Minnick said on Thursday at a presentation on foreign trade, put on by the Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce at The Coeur d'Alene Resort.

By seeking customers abroad, local companies can build their own business and help both Idaho and the U.S. climb out of the recession, he said.

"In this environment, shouldn't we talk about things that don't involve taxes, bailouts, running up national debt?" he said. "If we do this, there will be faster economic recovery, higher paying manufacturing jobs, and it will raise everyone's living standards."

International exports are more possible for small businesses than some might think, said Liz Reilly, director of the TradeRoots program under the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who also spoke on Thursday.

Nationwide, 42 percent of exports are from companies with 19 employees or less, she said.

"A lot of people think that when you talk about trade, it's just the big guys doing it," Reilly said.

Opportunities for international trade abound, she added, pointing out that 96 percent of the world's consumers are outside our country's borders.

"Our job is to find how we can get into those markets," she said.

The U.S. Export Assistance Center in Boise can help, said Director Amy Benson, another speaker at the event.

The global organization has a variety of programs to take businesses step by step through finding foreign markets and vendors, Benson said.

With offices in more than 80 countries, the assistance center pinpoints which countries are profitable for specific industries, she said.

"I work with local companies to match them with those opportunities," Benson said.

The organization can also conduct background checks on foreign vendors within 24 to 48 hours, she added.

"We'll find out, who are they? Are they well connected? Do they have the breadth and depth in that industry that they say they do?" she said.

The federal government is trying to help expand foreign trade, too, Reilly said, especially with President Obama's National Export Initiative to boost exports.

The most important step for the national government is to develop more Free Trade Agreements with foreign countries, which opens up negotiations on other countries lowering tariffs on incoming products.

Right now, the U.S. has only 17 FTAs, while China has 50, Reilly said.

"We're not even half of where they stand on things," she said, adding that the U.S. is currently pursuing FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

Minnick said the federal government could be doing a lot more for free trade.

That issue has been pushed far behind other topics, he said. He has found that few are open to discussing revival of the Doha world trade talks.

"Neither any Republicans or Democrats are putting free trade and negotiating better international agreements very high up on their lists as a way of getting the U.S. out of the worst recession since the '30s," he said.

Minnick was recognized at the presentation for his support of free trade with a Spirit of Enterprise award from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, presented by Renee Sinclair with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Jim Deffenbaugh with the Panhandle Area Council also presented Minnick with an award for an outstanding partnership with NATO and the economic development districts of Idaho.

Minnick hopes to persuade other congressional leaders to pursue the issue, he said.

"There is no time more appropriate that we should be pushing for free trade and opening foreign markets," he said.