ARLINGTON, Texas – Explaining her philosophy on government, Brownsville City Manager Helen Ramirez said she prefers to have officialdom step aside in order to let the private sector thrive.
“I’m in government and I’m the antithesis of government even though I’m the city manager,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez pointed out she worked for ten years in the private sector in international business development, part of it in Madrid, Spain.
“So, my perspective is different. I think we need to get out of the way, regulate less, but be safe. But really, that’s our role. And that’s what our role should be.”
What local government should be doing, Ramirez said, is help improve the quality of life of an area in order to attract new business.
Ramirez provided her analysis when speaking at a panelist at a YTexas summit. The subject matter for the panel to discuss was “Manufacturing, Onshoring and Nearshoring.” The moderator was former Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs.
YTexas is an elite Texas business network for companies relocating, expanding and growing in the Lone Star State. The organization is the premier go-to resource for the most current insider information about Texas’ community, commerce and culture.
Ramirez explained her philosophy about the role of government when responding to the comments of the other three panelists. All three work in the private sector. The panelists were: Thomas Hogg, a director of TMH Consulting, Rogelio De Los Santos, co-founder and managing director of Dalus Capital in Monterrey, and Ed Trevis, president and CEO of Corvalent. Trevis is based in Cedar Park, Texas, but comes from Brazil. They each said they support less government.
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said she supported a decision by the City of Brownsville to give a quarter cent of the city’s sales taxes to economic development efforts. She said this has helped the city’s Space economy.
She said she also supports a decision by the State of Texas to pump $350 million into a spaceport commission. She said this was needed because Texas was “light years” behind Space Coast Florida.
In his remarks, Hogg said Mexico is underperforming.
“Mexico, this year, will grow by three percent and that’s kind of good. But an economy with this opportunity and being the neighbor of the United States should grow double digit, or at least five to 6 percent or seven percent,” Hogg said.
“But.. the most important indicator here is GDP per capita. So Mexico hasn’t grown its GDP per capita for the last, I guess, 20 or 30 years. The country is getting poorer. They (need to) build up a middle class as we have the middle classes in some of the western European campus countries.”
De Los Santos said the Mexican government needs to “take the foot off of the pedal, the braking pedal. Just don’t interfere.”
He said the government “really could add value” by setting the direction the country needs to move in. “And that direction should be, let’s get into the digital or knowledge economy.”
De Los Santos said Monterey has a good GDP per capita for an advanced manufacturing economy but that it still needs to work to get closer to that of Texas.
He then shared a story that happened three weeks before the world went into “isolation” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was in Austin with ten business people from Monterey. We met with 13 CEOs of tech companies. And it was incredible that half of them, they didn’t know where Monterey was. Only two of them had relationships (with other countries in the Western Hemisphere), one with Mexico and one with a Caribbean island. But 80 percent of them were working with tech based employees out of India. India! A 16-hour flight and 13-hour time difference. Another culture. Another language.”
De Los Santos said he wanted to tell them: “Why don’t you just open your eyes and explore what you can do vertically and get on a flight and in 45 minutes (be in Monterrey)?”
He said these tech executives might go to India once a year. If they were doing business in Mexico they could go once a week.
“You will connect with what we said, family, timezone, culture, values, and language. And, at the end (of the day), it’s something that makes everyone more productive.”
De Los Santos added: “Things happen at the local level. The federal level, they just distract us. That’s a reality.”
Brownsville’s Ramirez said she agreed.
“I am kind of disappointed with the tech companies but I am not surprised they don’t know Mexico,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said when she was based in Madrid there was a downturn in the economy and many Spanish nationals left to find work in other European countries.
“At one point, 90 percent of our contracts were national, but in a few years 60 percent of our contracts were international because there was no work at home. So everybody kind of left for other parts of Europe.”
Ramirez said the company she worked for was bought out and she encouraged it to do business in the United States.
“I was the only American in a company of 400 people and they said, well, we can’t compete with them (the Americans). They’re already so far ahead. I said, it is not about competing, it’s about supporting and if you don’t try to go in, you will never make it, they will always be ahead of you. So I really challenged my company, the company I worked for, to invest (in the U.S.) They never did.”
Ramirez said Mexican and European companies need to try to develop in the American marketplace.
“Even if you lose money… in the end, everything’s going to pass you by and you will never be able to catch up. So I challenge Mexican and Spanish speaking companies or European companies and South American companies to come, invest and take that time.”
Editor’s Note: Click here to watch the full panel discussion.
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