No city can make everything as major cities can't grow food, mine for resources, etc. Further it's proven impossible to productively make everything in a single location, which means that every city will import. And they must export enough goods to offset the cost of doing this, or people's incomes will shrink or they'll have to move elsewhere. Hence economic plans often involve supporting companies which can export goods. It's important to bear in mind that exports come from more than just manufactured goods but include goods and services as well. Indeed manufactured goods often account for very little of the overall economy. This is exemplified by the fact that, according to the U.S. Trade commission, the Detroit Region makes about four times as much money per person as Chicago does on exporting merchandise; yet, its poverty rate is nearly twice as high. In fact, many economists have pointed out that in “Mature Economies” services such as design, finance, information, tourism, restaurants etc., are more important than manufactured goods. Some of Salt Lake City’s biggest exports, for example, are financial and translation services, while New York firms make billions on advertising and financial services, and Boston makes a fortune from inventing pharmaceutical and chemicals research.
There are many ways a city can try to expand exports, though as most of these are mentioned as larger strategies later, I'll only briefly touch on them here.
Improving the downtown in hopes of encouraging local shopping and attracting more tourists to the city. This is also done in hopes of attracting the firms which prefer to locate downtown such as those engaged in marketing, financial services, and accounting; although there is some debate on whether this can actually attract businesses.
Attracting new business is one of the most common methods for trying to build an export industry, although this tactic is rarely ever effective given its costs.
Providing business subsidies, tax breaks and grants in order to incentivize and aid businesses in exporting goods. For example, Washington State’s sales tax isn't tied to sales made to other states, which means Amazon.com and similar companies didn't have to pay any local taxes on most of their sales for a long time.
One federal program which has been successful at this, is the STEP Program which allows small businesses to travel with other local companies on trade missions to foreign countries where experts have already set up meetings and developed plans to support the businesses. The idea behind this program is that multiple business owners can gain more insights by traveling together with expert help, and of course will be able to afford trade missions with government subsidies. On one of these trade missions, Silicone Art Lab was able to connect with a South Korean Distributor, which they believe will help them increase revenue from $1 Million to $10 Million and allow them to triple their staff (Burg, 2013). Not a bad return given that according to the SBA website the program invested $375,000 in Tennessee where Silicone Art Lab was only one of many businesses which benefited from this program, especially when you consider putting up a few streetlights can easily cost more than $700,000. Given the relatively low amount the Federal Government is investing in this program, some city governments might do well to emulate or improve upon it. As part of this, city leaders can also take an active involvement in helping to develop trade, by traveling to other countries as part of a trade delegation. For example, Sam Adams, the mayor of Portland, traveled to Brazil to learn about the business environment in that country and then hired a consulting firm in Sao Paulo to help Portland business expand trade in Brazil (Katz and Bradley, 2013).
Improving neighborhoods as many businesses prefer to locate outside of the high rises and core downtown area. For example, Seattle's most successful companies aren't located “Downtown.” Adobe's offices are located over a mile north of the primary “Downtown Area,” which is near where Google Seattle is located, while Starbucks' offices are located about a mile south of the downtown area. Further Amazon's many buildings also tend to shy away from the “Downtown Area” to a large extent, while Microsoft's offices are actually in Redmond. This is important, because all too often cities ignore this fact by either putting all their emphasis on the downtown region, or by pulling funding from more popular, affluent neighborhoods which could support larger businesses.
Supporting small businesses which account for about 30% of all merchandise exports. Cities can help these businesses to increase their exports by acting as a conduit for information so that small businesses have the information they need to facilitate their exports (The National League of Cities). Further exports can be increased by nurturing entrepreneurship (McFarland and Brooks, 2009). For example, cities can build incubation programs to help increase the number of exporters.
Developing the infrastructure necessary for exporters; including better internet access, roads to support trucks into regions where small manufactures might be springing up, and of course through the establishment of Free-Trade-Zones (McFarland and Brooks, 2009).
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