According to an article from the Center for American Progress, Latin America is slowly emerging as an important market and key player in the global economy as the U.S. Hispanic community grows. Many Latin American economies weathered the global economic crisis better and emerged faster than the United States. Central and South America's gross domestic product grew 6 percent in 2010, and it is expected to grow 4 percent in 2011. Chile and Brazil have increasingly formed investment and trade links with China. Chile's trade with China is now more than double its trade with the United States, and China also has overtaken the United States as Brazil's top trading partner. Argentina also has benefited from China's investment. Last year it agreed to a $10 billion package with the Chinese to renovate its aging railway system.
On the other hand, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce reports that Hispanic businesses are the single fastest-growing segment of small businesses in the country. Close to 3 million Hispanic-owned businesses now generate almost $400 billion in annual revenue. Last September, the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency announced that the number of Hispanic-owned firms increased by nearly 44 percent between 2002 and 2007 from 1.6 million businesses to 2.3 million. Employment at Hispanic-owned firms also grew by 26 percent, a growth rate significantly higher than that of non-minority-owned firms.
U.S. Hispanic entrepreneurs are taking advantage of falling trade barriers by catering to the Hispanic market in the United States and by facilitating trade with the region.
The rising economic power of U.S. Hispanics is having an incredibly beneficial impact in the trade with Latin America. What can sometimes be a migratory chain becomes a supply chain. It becomes the migrant that sets up a business in the U.S. and starts selling American products to export abroad to their home country, or to import products to sell in the United States.
Source: Center for American Progress, “Building Better Bonds with Latin America,” March 2011.