Nirenberg plans to promote San Antonio internationally

On his first trip as mayor, Ron Nirenberg is in Virginia Beach for Sister Cities International board meetings, along with the group’s annual conference.

He’s currently chairman-elect of the Sister Cities board and will ascend to chairman next year, in the midst of San Antonio’s Tricentennial celebration.

The relationships between San Antonio and its international counterparts go far beyond ceremonial exchanges of trinkets and the signing of sister-cities proclamations. Nirenberg, who has been involved with the sister-cities organization since shortly after he was elected to the council in 2013, is poised to parlay his work with the organization into an effort to boost the city’s economic development.

“The majority of our GDP growth over the past eight to 10 years has been the result of foreign direct investment and export-import activity of local businesses expanding their markets overseas, having distribution and supply lines with partners across the border and so forth,” he said. “So the global economy has benefited local San Antonio businesses and local San Antonio families in an extraordinary way. Sister Cities is the network on which many of these partnerships are born.

“As experts steeped in international affairs will tell you, economic partnership doesn’t just happen,” he said. “It’s created after years of building relationships through cultural exchange, through education exchange, through artistic partnerships, which eventually lead to an opportunity for countries through private-sector businesses to do work together.”

San Antonio’s first sister city is Monterrey, Mexico — a relationship that predates the creation of Sister Cities International. Since then, the Alamo City has forged sister-city and friendship-city relationships with a dozen others in India, Japan, China, Taiwan and Spain. Tel Aviv, Israel and Darmstadt, Germany, are both “friendship cities.”

Ramiro Cavazos, president and CEO of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said Nirenberg has shown a commitment to international economic development.

“I am very pleased that we have a mayor who has a global perspective that will be beneficial to growing San Antonio’s economy internationally,” he said. “We’ve already seen proof in this short time that he’s been in office that he understands the important role that San Antonio can play to help our businesses grow.”

Cavazos — who noted that Nirenberg’s wife, Erika Prosper, is the chamber’s 2018 chair-elect — said the mayor has sent a strong message from San Antonio about its plans, pointing to the new council’s first action: passing a resolution in support of the Paris climate accord.

“It’s clear that signing onto the Paris climate agreement is very strong symbolism that he sends to everyone, not just those in Austin and Washington, but to other countries about our desire to be part of the global solutions for the challenges that we have,” he said.

Nirenberg is slated to lead a delegation of local business leaders to Israel in October in a joint trade mission between the Hispanic chamber and the Jewish Federation of San Antonio.

Nirenberg is expected to then go to Darmstadt.