The City of San Antonio has been selected by the Brookings Institution to participate in the Metropolitan Export Exchange (MEE) program. As part of the exchange, area business and civic leaders will spend nine months studying the region’s manufacturing and export industries. Based on those studies Brookings will guide the city in putting together a plan to increase the amount of goods and services it exports abroad.
In 2011, Brookings developed the Metropolitan Export Initiative (MEI), a ground-up collaborative effort to help a pilot group of regional civic, business, and political leaders, with their states, create and implement customized Metropolitan Export Plans (MEP). These localized export plans apply market intelligence to develop better targeted, integrated export-related services and strategies to help regions better connect their firms to global customers, as outlined by their individualized export goals.