PHOENIX  Arizona’s financial crunch is putting a drag on the state’s efforts to boost its exports even as Gov. Janet Napolitano is touting that as a way to save the state’s economy.

The governor, in a speech Monday billed as her “international state of the state’’ address, said Arizona needs “a new kind of economy.’’ More to the point, she told the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations, it has to be one that is less dependent on housing.

And she said one key is exports.

“There are lots of markets out there for all the wonderful things that we think of and produce right here in our state,’’ the governor said. Napolitano said she believes her office can help further those relationships.

But the governor, in response to an audience question, said the international trade missions she has headed since taking office in 2003 have been halted.

Napolitano said she had intended to go this year to both India and China, nations with two of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. That was before the state’s tax collections took a dive and the governor said she instituted “belttightening’’ measures.

“This does not seem to be a good time to do those sorts of trips,’’ she said.

The Department of Commerce reports that the last trade trip Napolitano headed was with a group that met with Mercosur, a freetrade organization from South America. But that trip actually was only to Los Angeles.

Napolitano has not gone on a foreign trade mission for at least a year.

Even as the governor was talking about the deficit, she began staking out her arguments for protecting funding for K12 and university education.

Sen. Bob Burns, RPeoria, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week that tax collections for the first two months of the fiscal year that began July 1 already are $180 million below estimates. He said if the situation does not improve the state could easily find itself with a $1 billion gap between actual revenues and its $9.9 billion spending plan.

Napolitano was unwilling to go that high, calling an $850 million deficit the worstcase scenario.

Whatever the number, that will lead to pressure to make further spending cuts.

Basic state aid to K12 education, which makes up about 40 percent of the budget, is constitutionally untouchable, though funding for fullday kindergarten is not.

Also offlimits to lawmakers is most of the state’s $1.4 billion health care program for the needy. And cutting funding for either prisons or public safety has been a political nonstarter.

That leaves the $1 billion in tax dollars for the state’s three universities as the largest place to cut.

Lawmakers lopped $50 million from their allocations in adopting the current budget  the budget that already is in the red. Napolitano said Monday she wants to protect the schools from further cuts.

“As we look at changes that have to be made in our own state budget the priority has to remain on education,’’ she said.

“It’s the long term solution for us,’’ the governor continued. “We have to have the workforce to sustain a new kind of economy.’’

Lawmakers did agree to let the universities borrow $1 billion, with $470 million of that earmarked for completing the new medical school and “biomedical campus’’ being run jointly by the University of Arizona and Arizona State University.’’ Aside from educating health care providers, the governor said she believes the work being done there “will create many commercialtype spinoffs.’’

Repayment of that borrowing is dependent on the Arizona Lottery being able to convince more people to buy more “scratch’’ and “pick’’ tickets.