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2020 CHAMPION OF TRADE:
State Secretary Jeffrey Bullock
BY JACOB OWENS
For more than 11 years, Jeffrey Bullock has overseen a variety of state offices and departments as Delaware’s Secretary of State, including the world-famous Division of Corporations that is home to about two-thirds of the Fortune 500.
After being appointed in 2009 by then-Gov. Jack Markell, Bullock aided in the state’s response to the Great Recession and is now spearheading much of Delaware’s economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bullock’s department oversees the Division of Small Business, the Diamond State Port Corporation, and the state’s international trade missions as well as the Division of Corporations.
Although the pandemic upended normal business in
the world’s export markets, Bullock noted that his trade office quickly assimilated to the challenge to ensure small businesses had buyers overseas. His team, known as Export Delaware, began organizing virtual trade missions that came with their own challenges, but found success.
“We’re getting real deals done. We’re getting real interest by small businesses in Delaware to participate and we’re getting a real interest in participation abroad,” he said, noting that Canada and Mexico remain the state’s strongest trade partners, but other deals have included South Korea, Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia.
Bullock also said that he believes the recent election of
Joe Biden, the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator, to the U.S. presidency will raise Delaware’s profile around the world.
“It’s going to put a brighter light on Delaware, and it will be up
to us to take advantage of that in any way that we can,” he said.
Bullock, as chairman of the Diamond State Port Corporation, helped to attract Gulftainer as the new operator of the Port
of Wilmington in 2018. The Emirati-based company has pledged to invest up to $600 million into the port that is one
of the largest fresh fruit destinations in North America over the next decade, including approximately $410 million for a new container facility at DuPont’s former Edgemoor site. That planned project will greatly expand Delaware’s import and export traffic for container ships from around the world.
“We are well-positioned to be a logistics center for the Mid-Atlantic United States. We have great access not only to surface transportation, but to air and maritime transportation,” Bullock said. “We can build a new port and we can greatly expand our port presence on the Delaware River, and we can do it in a way that doesn’t hurt the ports to our north.”
Despite the pandemic’s effects on the economy, Bullock
said that the Division of Corporations, the administrative office that records and tracks the more than 1.5 million incorporations made in the state, has actually seen an uptick in filings in 2020, including both international companies and small mom-and-pop LLCs. Delaware’s attraction for corporate governance is multi-pronged, including the state’s bar and legal services industry, its highly regarded Court of Chancery, its legislators’ willingness to continue innovating for the growth of its corporate business, and its favorable tax
climate, among other factors.
“I think we just need to stay the course and continue to do what we’ve been doing that’s been very successful,” he said.
One of the sectors where Delaware is preparing for future growth is in financial technology services, or so-called FinTech. Bullock helped lead the Markell administration’s Delaware Blockchain Initiative, which affirmed the state’s embrace of the burgeoning technology that can speed up transactions while increasing security and transparency.
Under now-Gov. John Carney, the state approved changes
to its General Corporation Law in 2017 to enable the use of blockchain in corporate record-keeping and Bullock’s office is seeking a private sector company to help pilot the technology with stock ledgers. While discussions about blockchain, the technology that underpins buzzy cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, has seemingly cooled in recent years, especially in light of the pandemic’s economic effects, Bullock said that he remains bullish on its potential impact.
“Don’t finish the chapter on blockchain yet,” he said. “It will come back in a form that is much more tailored to the needs of the private sector, because it’s much too powerful of a tool.”
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