We had meetings today with various organizations trying to boost business in San Antonio. They have identified about 10 target industries, but these are the same industries that every city in world wants to attract: Biosciences, aerospace, manufacturing, financial services, information technology, etc. To me, San Antonio’s key selling feature is its proximity and familiarity with the Mexican market. Elena Villerreal is the global trade and foreign investment manager for the City of San Antonio. One of her jobs is to promote the city as a launching pad for business in Mexico. San Antonio has its own international offices in the three major Mexican cities — Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara. Villerreal’s strategy is to encourage companies to set up San Antonio and get a taste of Hispanic business culture within the U.S. Then these companies can use the city’s international offices to get a toehold in Mexico.
Understanding Mexican business culture is essential to success in Mexico. You have to be prepared to have a long lunch and socialize for hours. Villerreal used to work for a big company, and she remembers a meeting between her boss and a potential business partner in Mexico. The two men met for lunch at 2 p.m., socialized until 11 p.m. and didn’t talk about business until they were getting up to leave. The two sides made a deal in about a minute. But the nine hours leading up to that deal were an important part of the process. “You first have to connect on a personal level to do business in Mexico,” Villerreal says. She sums up the Mexican business philosophy like this: “I’m not going to do any business with you until I know you, and until I can invite you into my house.”
The Port of San Antonio…
Like other major cities, San Antonio wants to be a freight hub. The city has one of about 200 foreign trade zones in the U.S. In these zones, goods can come in from other countries and be further assembled or engineered and then brought into the U.S. economy at a different (probably lower) tariff level than the separate parts. Or loads from abroad can be processed or repackaged and taken to another country without having to pay U.S. duties. The hot new feature in San Antonio’s foreign trade zone is at the decommissioned Kelly Air Force Base, which is being converted into the “Port of San Antonio.” The port is beside two major rail routes, one from L.A. to Miami and the other from Lazaro-Cardenas seaport in Mexico all the way up to the rail hub at Winnipeg. The port also has an 11,500-foot airstrip that can handle the biggest cargo planes. Finally, San Antonio is at the crossroads of four Interstate Highways. Jorge Canavati, vice president of business development for the Port of San Antonio, plays up these links in his efforts to promote the port.
As an aside, Canavati thinks the container ports of Lazaro-Cardenas and Prince Rupert, B.C., play major roles in keeping freight moving through North America. After strikes shut down the American west coast ports in 2002, importers and exporters in the U.S. realized the need for alternative ports. “The market is not going to let a shut down like that happen again,” Canavati says. Trade will move through the most efficient seaports, and use whatever transport gets goods to customers cheapest.
So has NAFTA been good for San Antonio? In the past year or so, a 120-year-old company called Friedrich — the last room air conditioner manufacturer in the U.S. — announced it would shut its San Antonio factory and relocate to Mexico. About 200 people lost their jobs. But around the same time, the new Toyota truck plant opened up in San Antonio. It is directly responsible for over 4,000 new jobs. Texas is a big market for trucks, so whether NAFTA gets any credit for this plant is open to debate, but Toyota has taken the sting out of other job losses.
Supper…
We went to The County Line, a place that specializes in BBQ sauce and lots of meat. Henry Han asked our waiter about the serving sizes. The waiter said serving sizes in Texas are generally pretty big, so he didn’t think The County Line servings were bigger than any other restaurant’s. “But maybe that’s why San Antonio is the fattest city in the U.S,” he added. I had the “Pork Rib Combo”, with four baby back ribs (four ribs, not four racks), a small pile of beef brisket and one medium sized sausage. I chose beans and coleslaw for my “fixin’s.” The serving size was not outrageously large, in my mind. As if to put its overeating customers at ease, The County Line put a reassuring note at the bottom of the menu: “We use 100 per cent pure canola oil for frying.” I guess I should have had the fries.
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