WorldCity launches World Trade Month, Miami TradeNumbers with Council of America’s Farnsworth

Eric Farnsworth, head of Council of the Americas’ Washington, D.C., office suggested policymakers and wonks could learn a little something from the 13th edition of WorldCity’s Miami TradeNumbers. Eric Farnsworth, head of Council of the Americas’ Washington, D.C, speaking at WorldCity’s quarterly Trade Connections event in May. Photos by Carlos Miller.

“We throw around ideas but a lot of it is divorced from any sort of reality and any quantitative analysis,” he said at WorldCity’s quarterly Trade Connections event on May 1. The event coincided with the kickoff of World Trade Month locally and around the globe as well as the publication of Miami TradeNumbers, which offers an in-depth look at what comprises Miami’s $124.73 billion in trade with the world.

“One of the other things I learned going through the numbers is the relatively small country of Costa Rica has more trade going with Miami than the larger country of Mexico,” he added. Much of that is due to Intel, WorldCity Founder Ken Roberts noted, which operates a computer chip manufacturing plant in Costa Rica and ships billions of dollars worth to Miami annually.
 
That data was the base for his comments to an audience of nearly 150. Much of the discussion focused around Mexico, which President Obama visited in early May. While the country has regularly produced gruesome media reports detailing the violence surrounding its drug trade, not enough has been said of its economic revival, Farnsworth said.
  
“We don’t just make things in one country or the other, we work together jointly and sell them,” he said of the commercial relationship that’s arisen since the passage of NAFTA. The “U.S. and Mexico are two separate countries with two sovereign governments and yet together are more closely integrated than ever before.”

On the border in Texas, “Laredo does almost twice as much trade with Mexico as Miami does with the world,” Roberts added.

The ties between Mexico and the United States still have a way to go, particularly when it comes to such issues as immigration. Yet Farnsworth suggested that business and political communities ought to look to unite the Western Hemisphere.
 
“I think Central Americans, for the most part, would agree that to unlock the potential of the region, the countries of the region have to view themselves as a region,” he said.
WorldCity Founder Ken Roberts holding up the 13th edition of WorldCity’s Miami TradeNumbers.Without that relationship, ground transportation across the region has proved unreliable, with trucks waiting hours at a time to cross several borders.
 
“From the private sector’s perspective, five or seven relatively small economies are five or seven relatively small economies.”
 
As a region, however, “the dynamic is different, the market is larger,” he added.

 Though such an idea seems identical to that of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, which never came to fruition, it could include those that would see the economic opportunities and participate, not tie it up in politics.

“Maybe it’s not the vision [of the FTAA] was wrong,” Farnsworth said. “Maybe it was just ahead of its time. We have countries who say we can’t afford to wait, we need to maintain our competitiveness and we can complete an agreement.”

Trade Connections, one of six event series hosted by WorldCity, is sponsored by American Airlines Cargo, Seaboard Marine, Port Miami, Miami International Airport and Banseco. The next event is scheduled for June 21.