Latin ties both benefit, drag on Miami economy
December 21, 2020 | The Miami Herald
“When Latin America sneezes, half of Miami catches cold and the other half gets rich selling Kleenex and Aspirin.” The COVID crisis will prove again that Miami’s resilient economy benefits both from the region’s successes as well as its failures..... more
What Biden Can Borrow from Trump’s “America First”
November 8, 2020 | The Hill
“America First”, the slogan, theme, battle cry, and mantra of the Trump administration, will be jettisoned along with “Make America Great Again” and “Keep America Great” with the president and his entourage on January 20th. “America First”, however, is more than a slogan; it also embodies policy prescriptions, ones which merit attention even now as president-elect Biden prepares to take office..... more
Baby Boomer-owned small business can help resuscitate urban economies
September 12, 2020 | The Hill
Cities across the nation are faced with a crucible. Slammed by economic recession and COVID-19, their economic losses in tax revenue, employment and municipal bond ratings have been staggering. Add to that increasing civil unrest, racial tensions and a spike in urban crime and one can clearly understand why many city dwellers and businesses that can are moving to the suburbs and exurbs..... more
Nearsourcing---A Boon for the Americas
September 8, 2020 | The Hill
One of the very few areas in the public policy arena where both Republicans and Democrats can agree is the need to bring companies and jobs back to the U.S. Initially the mantra of Democrats and organized labor, acolytes of President Trump’s populist-nationalist brand of Republicanism have adopted this policy stance, as well..... more
Trump's Tariffs on Aluminum Undermine the USMCA
August 10, 2020 | The Hill
It’s been just five weeks since the implementation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade, and already the Trump administration has hit its northern neighbor with the re-imposition of 10 percent tariffs on aluminum effective August 16..... more
Don’t Cut H-1B Visas, Increase Them
June 24, 2020 | The Hill
U.S. competitiveness is on a downward slope. The latest IMD Competitiveness Report reveals a decline in ranking from #1 in 2018 to #3 in 2019 and now #10 for 2020. One of the primarily reasons for the nation’s poor performance is the lack of technical and scientific human capital to invigorate and expand the American economy..... more
Curb your enthusiasm about the new unemployment numbers
June 5, 2020 | The Hill
While the president is very excited about the new unemployment numbers, it is akin to one of my students displaying irrational exuberance over a grade improvement from an F on a mid-term exam to a C- on the final—it still takes a C to pass the course..... more
Key Challenges for Hospitals in The Age of Covid-19
May 30, 2020 | The Hill
Prior to the arrival of COVID-19, a great many hospitals were facing daunting challenges—financial, regulatory, managerial. In April 2020, all three rating agencies lowered the financial outlook to negative, citing increased costs, along with a reduction in admissions and outpatient visits as creating new financial pressure on hospitals, on top of existing concerns around low reimbursement from government payers and coverage shifts from employer-sponsored insurance to Medicare..... more
Disruption—The New Normal
May 10, 2020 | The Hill
Dictionary definitions of “disruption” cast the term in a negative light, while the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, in his seminal work The Innovator’s Dilemma, applies “disruption” to the creation of new markets and value networks, shaking up the existing order. Airbnb’s challenges to the hotel industry and Uber’s and Lyft’s to the taxi industry are prime examples..... more
The power of supply chain management — A vital weapon in the war against the Coronavirus
April 15, 2020 | The Hill
The great French Algerian philosopher Albert Camus observed in his classic novel The Plague that “…always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” What does not take people by surprise is the naming and blaming and politicization (especially in an election year) that immediately come front and center when a national catastrophe takes place. In the “Age of Coronavirus” one side claims that COVID-19 did indeed take us by surprise, while the other counters that as early as November 2019 a report presented to the White House from the military’s National Center for Medical Intelligence made it clear that the contagion was very real and rapidly growing and widening..... more
Challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean in Confronting the Coronavirus
April 8, 2020 | Latin Trade
No region of the world, save Africa, is less prepared to contend with the challenges brought by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) than Latin America and the Caribbean..... more
The Brave New World of Working Remotely
April 1, 2020 | The Hill
"No hay mal que por bien no venga." This famous Spanish dictum translates roughly as “every cloud has a silver lining.” The silver lining here, courtesy of the Coronavirus, is the rapidly increasing number of Americans who work remotely. However, laboring off-site has been a trend for the last several decades, enabled by a host of varied and ever more powerful technologies. A variant of remote work (also known as telecommuting) is distributed work in which virtual teams—many scattered across the globe—collaborate on projects under the direction of their employer..... more
The Principal Challenge for Small Business is Preparing for Transition
March 5, 2020 | Miami Today
While we pride ourselves on being home to offices of 1,400 multinational companies such as American Airlines, Visa, Hilton, and Hewlett-Packard, it is important to note that these offices are not heavily staffed and more and more downsizing further or relocating to the Latin American region that the vast majority serve. The reality is that SMEs (small and medium-size enterprises) form the backbone of the South Florida economy. They comprise over 80% of businesses in the county and employ well over half of the workforce..... more
Must We Choose Between Fossil Fuels and Renewables?
February 27, 2020 | The Hill
In October 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that even 2 degrees of warming of the planet could lead to catastrophic effects of global proportions. The panel’s analysis concluded that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees instead could, for example, mean the difference between survival and extinction for thousands of plant and animal species..... more
Immigrants are an Economic Boon to America
January 7, 2020 | The Hill
Will President Trump make immigration a centerpiece of his 2020 re-election campaign? Pollsters, pundits and political insiders seem to think so. After all, anti-immigrant sentiment is a hallmark of the very base that helped catapult the president to election victory in 2016. One needs to recall that in announcing his candidacy for the presidency on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump excoriated Mexican immigrants as follows: “They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Actually, an impartial, factually-based assessment would have addressed immigration this way: “They’re bringing skilled and semi-skilled labor which we sorely need. They’re bringing entrepreneurs. And I assume there will be some bad people in the group.”..... more
Women on Boards of Directors—A Boon to Companies and Shareholders
January 7, 2020 | Miami Today
One of the most salutary developments in the business world during the last decade has been the rise of women in professional, managerial and leadership positions in companies. Often over looked, however, is their ascent, as well, to boards of directors..... more