The growth of Hispanic-owned businesses is the number one goal of the USHCC, a business advocacy group representing more than 5 million U.S. Hispanic-owned businesses. USHCC recently hosted its Legislative Summit with several national elected officials and business leaders. USHCC President & CEO Ramiro Cavazos talked to Portada about the Legislative Summit and the business prospects for the US $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill.
The United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) has made it a top priority that its members “get to do the work for a sizable part of the US $1.3 trillion infrastructure bill that will be awarded in the next 12 months”, Ramiro Cavazos tells Portada.
The bipartisan infrastructure bill should boost Hispanic-owned businesses. That is why the recent Legislative Summit focused on presenting Hispanic-owned businesses to the U.S. government and buyers from the corporate sector through match-making functions. In addition to the federal government and many agencies, there was a wide representation of the private sector at the Legislative Summit, which included companies like Anheuser Busch, Google and Kroger. Cavazos notes that U.S. Hispanic businesses were pre-screened to provide optimal matches to both private and government-owned entities. “We hope that in 3 months we will be able to count the number of contracts,” says Cavazos who adds that the USHCC works with two vendors who will be quantifying the sucess of the match-making exercise at the Legislative Summit.
“The U.S. Government is the largest buyer,” Cavazos asserts. “The U.S. Government is much larger than Google and Microsoft, yet less than 1% of the buying power of our government, which is financed through taxes, goes to Latino-owned business,” he mantains.
Growth of Hispanic owned Businesses: Sectors Primed for Expansion
Asked about which companies and sectors are particularly well positioned to gain government contracts, Cavazos mentions sectors including construction (10% of construction companies are Latino-owned) cybersecurity, food production, advertising/marketing, architecture, plumbing and air-conditioning.
As Marissa Calderon, Executive Director, NCRC Community Development Fund, Inc. recently told Portada Hispanic participation in the economy is not only important for corporate social responsibility reasons, but it also is good for business as diversity Increases Innovation. The USHCC’s Cavazos totally agrees that minority owned business growth is very beneficial for the U.S economy: “We feel the U.S. government and the private sector need to open opportunities to companies in these sectors. We just want to have a seat at the table where decisions are taken,” Cavazos claims.
A Common Thread: The American Dream and Culture
The USHCC mission is to promote the growth, development, and interests of more than five million Hispanic-owned businesses that contribute over US $800 billion to the American economy every year.
The USHCC has 250 chambers and members in places as distant as Hawaii, Miami and Oklahoma. What binds these members together, according to Cavazos, is that they want to achieve the American Dream. “It could be someone who came across the river in Mc. Allen, Texas, or someone in New Mexico who has been here for 500 years. Our common thread is the pursuit of the American Dream and our culture.”
The U.S. Hispanic economy, the second largest GDP in the Spanish-speaking world after Mexico, is a dynamic part of the U.S. economy, the number one economy in the world. Cavazos is a trusted economic development expert and champion for bipartisan solutions that generate wealth to advance economic opportunity for the Hispanic community. “An economy that drives freedom, social justice, economic security is beneficial to all Americans,” he asserts.
Prior to his role at the USHCC, Cavazos was the President and Chief Executive Officer of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (SAHCC), the nation’s first Hispanic Chamber of Commerce founded in 1929.
