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Article: Casa San Antonio; blazing the trail to free trade. (San Antonio, Texas)
- Article from:
- Public Management
- Article date:
- June 1, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1994 International City-County Management Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Two years before the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the city of San Antonio, Texas (population 936,000), was the first major U.S. city to open a representative office in Mexico, leading the way for other local governments to promote two-way trade with Mexico. In October 1991, Casa San Antonio, the city's foreign office, was inaugurated in Guadalajara, Mexico's third largest city. Its success led to a second office in the industrial city of Monterrey in 1992.
The city's Economic Development Department oversees Casa San Antonio, which, together with the city's representatives in Taipei and Tokyo, is designed to help local businesses ...