Huntsman, who led a panel on trade during the Western Governors' Association annual meeting, said the smaller regional efforts could cater to the West's economic needs.

For Utah, that means focusing on biotech, aerospace and ensuring the state's entrepreneurs get the support they need, he said. It also means building alliances across political lines. Huntsman said he recently met with New Mexico's Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson with an eye to promoting the two states' overseas trade.

Huntsman said his office and partners, including the Utah Small Business Administration and the Chamber of Commerce, want to build an international trade center.

"We're looking at probably moving faster than the United States government in capturing emerging market opportunities," he said during an interview.

The Western Governors' Association says that if the West were a separate country, its economy would be the third largest in the world, behind the United States and Japan. The combined value of the West's merchandise trade exports in 2004 was approximately $320 billion.

But Asian markets aren't the only ones in play. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano said Arizona representatives went on a trade mission last year to Great Britain seeking partnerships for a genomics consortium. In October, she will lead another trade mission to Santiago, Chile.

"You guys can't go now," she said to the rest of the governors.

The quip pointed up a problem for Western states: Their commonalities can just mean more competition in global markets if they don't develop working partnerships, or find areas unique to individual states.

Napolitano pointed to Arizona universities' research into drought as an example.

But it is the two Asian giants, China and India, that are transforming global markets. Panel participant Oded Shenkar, who holds the Ford Motor Co. chair in global business management at Ohio State University, predicted that 20 years from now China will be the world's largest economy.

"When it happens, it will be the end of the 150 years the United States has been the largest economy in the world," he said.

Shenkar noted that 50 percent of the Western states' exports are to China; at the same time, most of the job losses are due to China's ascendance.

Huntsman, however, later said it is premature to be awe-stricken by China's coming economic might. "China has to be looked at as a set of countries within a country," said the governor, who learned Mandarin while on a mission to Taiwan for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and who has served as U.S. trade ambassador in the Far East.

"There are some tremendous challenges China is facing," Huntsman said, including inevitable social dislocation that comes with its new economy, a banking system badly in need of reform and growing world pressure on the Chinese government to enforce intellectual property regulations it agreed to in 2001 when it signed on with the World Trade Organization.

Still, Huntsman said, "we're going to have to learn to live in a world with more than one economic superpower."

The West's top five export markets are Mexico, Canada, Japan, China and South Korea. For the country as a whole, Canada is the top trade partner. U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, also a panelist, said Mexico likely will ascend to the No. 2 spot this year, displacing Japan.

Evidence of strain in U.S.-Canadian trade relations emerged during the panel discussion. Montana Gov. Mike Schweitzer said that while his state imports all of its nitrogen and most of its oil from Alberta, Canada, the state and the province compete for the same agricultural markets.

That relationship is hurt by U.S. manufacturers' willingness to sell American herbicides more cheaply to Canada, he said.

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein complained that the U.S. ban on Canadian beef due to fears about an infectious degenerative brain disease that can affect animals and humans was "nonsense." Schweitzer countered that when the border closed, Montana cattle were still in Alberta feed lots.

The Western Governors' Association is meeting through today to discuss regional economic growth, innovation and trade barriers. Also participating are Gov. Bill Owens, Colorado; Gov. Frank Murkowski, Alaska; Gov. Mike Rounds, S.D.; Gov. Dave Freudenthal, Wyo.; and Canadian Lorne Calvert, Saskatchewan.