Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera, pictured, and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are expected to sign an economic partnership pact at the second global forum of the Global Cities Initiative. (TOMAS BRAVO, REUTERS / November 12, 2013)
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In his first official international trip, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Thursday is expected to sign an economic partnership agreement with Mexico City, which would supplant a decades-old Sister Cities goodwill arrangement.
The memo of understanding, the first of its kind nationwide, commits the two cities to work together to build up exports, foreign investment, a skilled workforce and research endeavors. Developed with assistance from the Brookings Institution, the agreement also calls for cooperation in tourism, culture and water resources.
While Chicago and Mexico City have been Sister Cities since 1991, "this takes it to another level," Emanuel said Wednesday before flying out. "In the past, there would be more flights, some cultural exchange. This will include economic, intellectual and cultural exchanges."
If it works out well, the agreement would serve as a template for updating Chicago's 27 other Sister City agreements, said Emanuel, whose trip is being paid for by World Business Chicago, the not-for-profit that leads the city's business development efforts.
"For the first time, between two cities, they will take a comprehensive economic approach toward strengthening shared industries in a way that brings jobs and global competitiveness to both cities," said Amy Liu, co-director of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program.
The proposed agreement, which does not include any financial commitments, calls for the cities to provide counsel and support to companies and universities that are exploring partnerships. The cities would encourage sharing of technical knowledge, training strategies, recruitment efforts and the like. Also, they would agree to promote meetings that are aimed at drawing investments and to promote tourism in each other's city.
An annual work plan, with specific goals and reporting requirements, would be developed.
Mexico City is the Chicago metro area's second-largest North American trade partner, after Toronto, according to Brookings. Companies such as Abbott Laboratories, Baxter International, Illinois Tool Works, Motorola Solutions, United Airlines and Seko operate in both areas, examples of how both regions look to business services, advanced manufacturing, and transportation and logistics as key economic drivers.
A just-published Brookings report found that North American metro areas, rather than competing with one another, are producing products together through far-reaching supply chains.
"Forty percent of the products we buy from Mexico include U.S. content," Liu noted.
Cooperative pacts between metro areas can help strengthen those economic clusters, she said. Growing advanced manufacturing, with its fast pace of innovation and high-paying jobs, is seen by Brookings as especially crucial to regional and national prosperity.
Advanced manufacturing represents 47 percent of trade nationwide but only 38.3 percent for the Chicago metro area, according to Brookings.
And as developing countries have industrialized, North America's share of the global export market has fallen, to 7.2 percent in 2011 from nearly 9 percent in 2005, according to the World Trade Organization.
Emanuel and Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera are expected to sign the pact at the second global forum of the Global Cities Initiative, where Mexico's secretary of the economy is scheduled to offer a welcome.
The Global Cities Initiative is a project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase. Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its founding chairman.
His father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, signed the first Sister Cities agreement, in 1960, with Warsaw, Poland. The program grew under the younger Daley's tenure to include 28 cities.
Daley said he sees the new pact as a natural outgrowth of the Sister Cities program and as natural for the city, where residents of Mexican origin make up a significant portion of the population.
Emanuel, elected in 2011, has made one other foreign trip during his tenure, flying to Israel last summer to mark the bat mitzvah of his younger daughter, Leah. While there, he attended the signing ceremony for a research initiative between the University of Chicago and Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and spoke at the Israeli Presidential Conference alongside former President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The memo of understanding, the first of its kind nationwide, commits the two cities to work together to build up exports, foreign investment, a skilled workforce and research endeavors. Developed with assistance from the Brookings Institution, the agreement also calls for cooperation in tourism, culture and water resources.
While Chicago and Mexico City have been Sister Cities since 1991, "this takes it to another level," Emanuel said Wednesday before flying out. "In the past, there would be more flights, some cultural exchange. This will include economic, intellectual and cultural exchanges."
If it works out well, the agreement would serve as a template for updating Chicago's 27 other Sister City agreements, said Emanuel, whose trip is being paid for by World Business Chicago, the not-for-profit that leads the city's business development efforts.
"For the first time, between two cities, they will take a comprehensive economic approach toward strengthening shared industries in a way that brings jobs and global competitiveness to both cities," said Amy Liu, co-director of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program.
The proposed agreement, which does not include any financial commitments, calls for the cities to provide counsel and support to companies and universities that are exploring partnerships. The cities would encourage sharing of technical knowledge, training strategies, recruitment efforts and the like. Also, they would agree to promote meetings that are aimed at drawing investments and to promote tourism in each other's city.
An annual work plan, with specific goals and reporting requirements, would be developed.
Mexico City is the Chicago metro area's second-largest North American trade partner, after Toronto, according to Brookings. Companies such as Abbott Laboratories, Baxter International, Illinois Tool Works, Motorola Solutions, United Airlines and Seko operate in both areas, examples of how both regions look to business services, advanced manufacturing, and transportation and logistics as key economic drivers.
A just-published Brookings report found that North American metro areas, rather than competing with one another, are producing products together through far-reaching supply chains.
"Forty percent of the products we buy from Mexico include U.S. content," Liu noted.
Cooperative pacts between metro areas can help strengthen those economic clusters, she said. Growing advanced manufacturing, with its fast pace of innovation and high-paying jobs, is seen by Brookings as especially crucial to regional and national prosperity.
Advanced manufacturing represents 47 percent of trade nationwide but only 38.3 percent for the Chicago metro area, according to Brookings.
And as developing countries have industrialized, North America's share of the global export market has fallen, to 7.2 percent in 2011 from nearly 9 percent in 2005, according to the World Trade Organization.
Emanuel and Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera are expected to sign the pact at the second global forum of the Global Cities Initiative, where Mexico's secretary of the economy is scheduled to offer a welcome.
The Global Cities Initiative is a project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase. Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its founding chairman.
His father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, signed the first Sister Cities agreement, in 1960, with Warsaw, Poland. The program grew under the younger Daley's tenure to include 28 cities.
Daley said he sees the new pact as a natural outgrowth of the Sister Cities program and as natural for the city, where residents of Mexican origin make up a significant portion of the population.
Emanuel, elected in 2011, has made one other foreign trip during his tenure, flying to Israel last summer to mark the bat mitzvah of his younger daughter, Leah. While there, he attended the signing ceremony for a research initiative between the University of Chicago and Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and spoke at the Israeli Presidential Conference alongside former President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
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