The RCGA has been talking for months about a priority project to make St. Louis a hub for cargo flights from China, and RCGA President Dick Fleming now says the group is doing a study to learn how much “backhaul” traffic cargo carriers could expect. In other words, we can assume that the planes would be full of Chinese goods headed for the Midwestern U.S., but would there be enough goods headed in the other direction to make the flights profitable?

On that front, Cletus C. Coughlin presents some promising figures in the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank’s Regional Economist magazine. Missouri exported $1 billion of goods to China last year, Illinois nearly $2 billion. What’s more, both states’ China shipments are growing rapidly. Between 1989 and 2007, Missouri’s exports grew at an annual rate of 32 percent, Illinois’ by 18 percent. U.S. exports to China rose by 15 percent a year during that period.