Efficiently, effectively, and understanding how you can do that what you balance that with security challenges at the border and that is of fundamental importance for border communities and our economies as a whole. However, i do not think that is enough. Not enough for u. S. Border communities or for Mexican Border communities to really have the vibrant communities that we want and the quality of life that people in the Border Regions aspire to. This requires strategies for Economic Development that leverage the unique position of those communities along the border as a way to attract companies to do business in the region. There is a unique Value Proposition there. The combination of the competitive advantages of the two countries sidebyside that makes working and producing in the border region particularly attractive and interesting. If we look back over time and go border say the Industrialization Program of the 1960s, the beginning of free trade between the countries, andsed on the border region it was effective in attracting a certain amount of manufacturing investment to that part of the border. Side of thean border. It is called the twin plant model. That was the idea of the program. Meaning there would be a plant on the mexican side of the border and a plant on the west side of the border. Plantsmexican side, the appeared but oftentimes, they did not have the twin component on the u. S. Side of the border. Sufficient to get those investments on the u. S. Side of the border. Where you need people like these guys here to make the case to the companies that this is where they needed to do business. And then we needed to set up factors that would make the region attractive. That is what i want to think through and talk to our panelists about. I think there is a time in that space of what else is needed that we can think about. Workforce development is more key than ever. Having the qualified, welltrained workforce to operate more sophisticated machines and equipment than ever and that is one of the things that companies are looking for. Quality of life. Like john wagner was just talking about. It is what Everyone Needs and our local community to attract talent to fill positions so Companies Want to do business there. Access to energy and infrastructure. The list goes on and on. We could get some sort of prioritization about the key elements. I am really thrilled to have three great panelists here with me today. I will go through and do a brief introduction of each of them. You have your bios in your packet you have their bios in your packet. We have the director of the texas border of Economic Development. Frederico has a number of previous positions he has held in the City Government and the state government. He worked as a mexican customs broker for some time. A lot of different experiences he will be drawing upon. To his left is john parrella. John is the ceo of the Border Alliance which is unique in representing three different states, new mexico, texas, and two while the chihuahua. Secretaryo a cabinet for new mexico and has a lot of fascinating experience from his time there. And finally, last but not least, is mario. I am flipping through and missing my spot. He is with the greater brownsville investment corporation. Incentives corporation. And is executive director and ceo of it. He is he also sits on the board of directors for the hispanic caucus institute. Toyota also worked with in san antonio. Thank you for joining us. One last thing before i jump in. Of work over bunch the years on Economic Development in the border region but recently wrote a chapter for a book that is about to be published through the university of Arizona Press and interviewed two out of the three of these gentlemen through that process. I spoke with frederico and john about this topic in detail and will probably try to draw out some of the points that we spoke about recently. I also had the chance to work with the university of texas and other stakeholders in the greater brownsville area about an Economic Development project over the last several years that the department of commerce eda helped fund. This will be a good chance for thesedig deep on some of issues. I want to give each of you a chance to make some opening comments about your thoughts regarding Economic Development in your corner of the border. Mario, i know you have a couple of slides about the brownsville region so maybe we will start with those and then jump into more conversational pieces of the program as well. Mario good afternoon, everyone. What i thought i would do is a small set of slides to set up the conditions about what we are talking about and i think that will open up some conversation. Ofwnsville is at the tip southern texas. Way down at the bottom of the border. You can see where it is. There, the ports of brownsville. Relative to san antonio, you can see how far it is. Here are some key numbers. And i hope we touch on these because these numbers are not just relevant to brownsville but to many communities along the border in the region. It is the Largest Community in the valley. 31 is below the poverty level. I have another chart about what that looks like compared to our neighbors. We just looked at this data where we have 15,000 per capita income. It was 13,000. The Median Income per household 64 make it out of high school. This these are the challenges we have in the border region. When i started using this particular number, we saw the commission are talking about the digital divide. And a discussion about conductivity and broadband. 60 of the households in brownsville are not connected. When you go into a Technology Phase and the teacher asks their students to do homework online coming you are leaving a lot of the population behind. It is a further struggle. That is the point i am making. Withis the comparison brownsville and its neighbors. These are the three poorest states in the country, along this border. In terms of problem problemsolving, we need to hit it with a lot of different angles. Workforce development is our top item based on the conditions i just showed you. The disconnected condition, the poor condition. We feel Workforce Development is key especially when we look at high skill, high tech programs and the lead time to get someone 46 years. R that, we need to start in middle school and get them going. We recently launched a Workforce Initiative in brownsville called we grow our own. Two weeks ago, we were awarded the Texas Workforce award. We are proud of the work we are doing. Technology a senate bill was passed two sessions ago and it allows High School Students to graduate with a twoyear technical degree. I know many of you have children or you yourselves have gone through a dual credit program. We went to austin and said we need dual credit in technology so we can get students in the hightech space right away. There are about 15 schools that are in this space in dallas and two more south of that. We are working on creating a manufacturing hub. Based on what is happening in think we need to be prepared in a larger way, not just workforce but also research and development. We hope to do that with a Multi National university system. Monterrey tech. University of texas. And texas a m. That would make it a regional concept. Serviceuring and center. This is funded through the department of commerce. Create given to texas to nine partnerships in manufacturing assistance. Towant it to change or add its scope for Workforce Development. We really work very hard with , and as we discussed the twin plant system. Recently, in san antonio, in terms of what we are doing in key come innovative ways to incentivize companies. We are not Incentivizing Companies unless they provide hightech, high paying jobs. We closed six deals recently adding 1155 jobs. On average over 16 an hour which is a lot in this area. Unique kinds of ways we are looking at Incentivizing Companies to come in. And the target for everything we are doing is to meet these targets together. And to share this across the valley and then the binational perspective. At least we could understand the condition we have along the border region. Christopher wilson the border is very diverse. A lot of different conditions along parts of the border. Some of the communities represented here, for example, the san diego context versus brownsville context. Different challenges but also different assets. John, do you want to talk about how the border system works to kick us off . John many thanks to all of you for being here and to the Wilson Center for hosting this. My friends and allies in the audience. There are a lot of issues to deal with and address. Alliance islex unique. It represents the three states in two countries. Region. E our it is a region that is comprised of about 2. 5 million residents. Put it in the middle of the United States and it would be in the top 20. It is geographically located as andsouth as brownsville is as far west as you can go in texas and still be in texas. We are right in the middle of the nafta countries east and west and north and south. Strategically, we like to consider ourselves the gateways to trade. 1 5 of the trade transacted between the u. S. And mexico at our six ports of entry to the region. With the uncertainty currently existing in the world today and especially with respect to our bilateral relationship with mexico, and make no mistake that mexico is a strategic and economic ally to the u. S. Despite all the uncertainty, our organization which has three functions, to serve as the Economic Agency of the region, we act as the policy advocacy we act as the policy Advocacy Organization for the region. The uncertainty, we are seeing record levels of interest from companies, and vetted projects in our region. We are moving up quickly especially in the manufacturing sector. In our region, we are the fourth largest manufacturing hub in north america. In the last year, 18 months, we surpassed detroit as being the fourth largest and you factoring hub in north america. We thousand highpaying jobs created in our region. 3000 highpaying jobs created in our region. We should be a model. We certainly are very proud of those statistics. Two days ago, it was announced that el paso has record level low unemployment levels. We are at 3. 6 prenafta. It was always hovering around the 12 14 range. Our sister city, below 3 juarez. Ment, see yociudad and that is leading to wage gains in a positive way. We are happy about the development of occurring along the border. We dealopeful that as not only with workforce issues natural policy issues in washington, that we could reach a level of certainty. As has been mentioned. Is it is i have heard important for future development and economic opportunity. Uncertaintyntra is the enemy of jobs, economic growth, and investment. To maximize their potential we need to be working at the macro level but those of us on this panel need to be working at the local level to prepare ourselves for the jobs of the future. For a workforce that is trained and trainable. That is the number one issue for Companies Looking to expand or relocate do you have a trained or trainable workforce . And im happy to say that not ,nly does el paso have that most if not all of the communities along the southern border offer that strategic advantage for Economic Development. For Companies Looking to keep the competitive advantage in the region, i always emphasize that we do have that trained and trainable workforce. But we need to get into a discussion about some of the artificial ceiling that exists and why we still have room to grow in our respective communities along the southern border. Once again, thank you for inviting me here. Frederico thank you, chris and to you all for being here. I workedction with the custom brokers. I am not when. Seen what they have gone ,hrough because of mexican laws they lose their livelihood and even sometimes their liberty, i would never want to be a custom broker. I have worked with them for 16 years in mexico city and the last time i was there i was in charge of training custom brokers and their personnel. I not only live at the border but i have a very strange story. It like this i am a mexican that was born in canada and now i work in the United States. L and of to a year ago, i had a son working in states one in the united and one in mexico. I go back and forth every day. Slides just a couple of so we can get into the conversation. , theu all well know importance of our border ports of entry. This is what texas represents for world trade. 30 point 8 of all u. S. Trade with the war with the world crosses through laredo. Second behind los angeles. 10. 7 , el paso. 10. 1 in dallas, fort worth. And 5. 6 , port arthur district. Will have the slides so if anyone wants them, we can send them to you. All of these come you already know. This one is interesting. The share of trade between mexico and the United States since 20122018 has been growing constantly. This lastthat we have year was 36. 9 through the city of laredo. Through the14. 9 includinge ports brownsville. That gives us 52 of all u. S. Mexico trade through our district. Visit 12. 5 is trade through el paso. 19. 7 is trade through the other ports of entry. And 15. 9 is the rest of the ports of entry. This is u. S. Mexico trade. Minute through all of these. And maybe this is interesting for some. Crime rate at our ports of entry, the u. S. , this is fbi information. Out of every 100,000. Down here come you have laredo, 622. El paso, 379. San diego, 367. At our border communities, we have the lowest crime rates of many parts. And do not get me talking about other cities like the one where we are at right now. This is information just radio. If any of you wants this information come you can go to our website. States, of the border we have all of the ports of entry. This is information for the then we have imports and exports for each and every one of the cities of your respective states. You information is here and can download it and it is constantly uploaded with recent data. And here are the commodities that cross throw. Through the ports of entry. Those are the slides i wanted to share. Iristopher wilson why dont keep going with you for a moment. When we talked during the process of creating that book chapter i mentioned, you talked to me about how it was that the together to build the world trade bridge. Hub ofis the major u. S. Mexico trade. How is it that the city developed that skill set . Someone like you in your career skill. Nts a lot of it takes a lot of skill to develop a logistics cluster. How was it that city built the bridge and had such a specialization facilitating trade . Doderico it has a lot to with the origin. And its geographical location. Before and after nafta, it was a very important crossing trade crossing point for trade. Have customs and trade community that is very proactive. In the 1980s, before a lot of the things that we take for granted now in technology, who justustom borders returned after studying at m. I. T. Started working on ways of using computers to facilitate transmission of data. We are about floppy disks. Withhen, they went over the mexican customs and they developed this system where everything was starting to go through computers. And even though at the beginning it was once a week when they took the disc to the bridge and downloaded everything, and then it was every day and eventually as agot to develop it Pilot Project for all of mexico. Uarter ofrq there. Lso have offices and that is something we can talk about later. Of thing is that because these individuals who live and whose parents and grandparents live because of trade, they went full of ahead on this. The thing that really changed everything was they got together , who was twice mayor in the beginning of the 1990s and at the end, the city had long lines of trailers that went through the middle of the city. And in front of schools. There were so many accidents. I used to go to a school that 1960s,oss, in the and it was awful then. 1980s and 1990s, it was incredible. Transportation guys put their money where their mouth was and started financing the construction of the bridge because the Mexican Federal government did not do it. They do keep the revenue of the tolls. Texas, theyaredo, get a lot of that. It was that there was political will and Economic Vision that they had to do something to get the traffic out of the city and make it faster. Christopher wilson one lesson there is that it is a coming together of the public and private sectors to get things done. And sometimes, it get things done even when the federal government is not working so well. We heard that story again and again. Local communities figuring out ways to get things done and how about the federal government when they are experiencing challenges and problems in facilitating the trade. States you different represent. Across the u. S. Mexico border is sometime a local community on the u. S. Side of the border is competing with another local community on the u. S. Side of the border for investments, for traffic, across bridges, things like that. How is it that an organization like yours is able to overcome some of those challenges . You represent three different groups of people that have elected officials with different sets of consistencies yet somehow you get everyone to see the value of cooperation over the possibility of competition. How does that develop . How do you talk to people so that they see that value of cooperation . Thats a great question, chris. And its certai