Representatives from more than a dozen companies and organizations–plus the mayors of Tampa and St. Petersburg–have been in Santiago, Chile this week as part of a trade mission.
It’s a welcome sign that the Tampa Bay Export Alliance, which didn’t exist until earlier this year, has been able to put together such a high-profile mission to this state’s fourth largest trade partner.
It’s a sound strategic move with a hemispheric neighbor known for fiscal and political stability. As a result of a 10-year-old free trade zone, U.S.-Chile trade now exceeds $28 billion. Exports are six times what they were a decade earlier. Chile’s targeted sectors range from health care and medical equipment to renewable energy and telecommunications.
And timing certainly matters, given that exports are something this region definitely wants to ramp up right now. Currently, exports account for about 8 percent of the (eight-county) Tampa Bay area’s Gross Regional Product. We can do better–given our location and infrastructure. The national average is 12 percent of exports contributing to an area’s GRP.
But it’s more than proactively pursuing more contacts and exports in Chile. It’s also about regionally working together toward a common trade goal. It’s not about hyping Tampa, per se, or the erstwhile “Pinellas Suncoast.”
“Symbolically and substantively, this is a huge step forward in the Pinellas-Hillsborough relationship,” underscored Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn. “But more importantly, it recognizes that we compete together as a region and that the parochialism is a thing of the past.”