Republican Congressman David Schweikert of Arizona and Democratic Congressman Brad Schneider of Illinois have teamed up to voice their concerns over steel and aluminum tariffs against Israel, one of Arizona’s top trading partners. The two House members penned a letter to Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. trade representative, imploring him to work with the Trump administration to exempt Israel from the tariffs and join other major trade partners, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea, and Australia.

Israel exports in steel and aluminum are small in comparison to other trading partners, the relationship with Israel is something that Schweikert and Schneider want to protect.

“While these numbers may seem small, the fact remains that the U.S. is a major trading partner for Israel and any disruption in the economic relationship will have a far-reaching impact,” wrote the congressmen, who are members of the House Ways and Means Committee. “We do not believe imports of steel and aluminum from Israel are a threat to U.S. national security and are asking you to explain why Israel has not been granted an exemption.”

Trump is controversially invoking a national emergency statute to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum.

Industrial production in general has seen an uptick over the past two years. While this poses an opportunity for better import levels, imports of steel and aluminum products impacted by the Trump administration’s metal tariffs have dropped. These imports were down more than $1.4 billion, about a six percent drop, from the first half of 2017 and the first half of 2019–this, according to trade data from U.S. News.

“At the base of this discussion is the simple fact that the State of Israel is not a national security threat to the United States,” said Rep. Schweikert. “Ensuring that our greatest ally in the region is treated similarly to other key allies is important to show our seriousness and commitment to the Jewish state. As a beacon of democracy in the region, with a long history of shared democratic values between our two nations, it is important we do not establish a precedent that Israel is a security threat.”

The tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum were originally announced back in March of 2018. Currently, the only tariffs that have been lifted have been with Canada and Mexico while certain products from Argentina, Brazil, Australia, and South Korea, as listed above, have also received some trade exemptions on the steel and aluminum duties.

Monthly industrial output and business investment analysis shows some disappointment in the industry. The drop off in metal demand can be related to the business uncertainty that has emerged during the ongoing international trade issues with countries like China and those in the European Union.

Schweikert and his allies argue that the scale of business with Israel is irrelevant, that this about the relationship as a whole and taking care of that relationship moving forward that’s more important, especially for continued bilateral success in the years to come.

“As Israel is a small country, the quantity of the trade is irrelevant; the important part here is treating our ally fairly,” says Schweikert. “Anyone who is familiar with the important work our two countries do together on the Iron Dome and other important mutual defense technologies knows that Israel is a trusted ally and friend.”

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Tomato growers in Mexico came to terms with the U.S. Department of Commerce on Thursday, September 19, signing an agreement to suspend an anti-dumping investigation into tomatoes coming into the U.S. through Arizona’s ports of entry. While the new deal raises the floor price for Mexican tomatoes, it also ends a 17.56 percent duty that was set in motion in May when the Tomato Suspension Agreement was originally cancelled. Without the new deal, the duty was set to raise by an additional two percent.

Following the end of the agreement heading into the summer, officials from the Commerce Department and their Mexican counterparts discussed cutting a completely new suspension agreement, a move spearheaded by the Florida Tomato Exchange. But for the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas (FPAA), the Nogales-based produce corporation led by Lance Jungmeyer, the move has not been well received.

Leaders at the FPAA and importers here in Arizona are concerned about the inspection requirements that could end up leading to more delays at the border where bringing produce in are already high. For perishable commodities, such as tomatoes and other produce items, this could end up being a major loss in product, money, and solid working relationships.

Now, the FPAA, Mexican exporters, and Arizona importers all have another shared concern on their hands: the construction of new warehouse spaces along the U.S.-Mexico border, namely in Nogales.

Construction centered around adding more square footage to the inspection centers across the Southwest is projected to cost stakeholders $200 million when completed. In Nogales, which sees a heavy flow of trucks carrying tomatoes and other perishables every single day, additions could cost anywhere between $70-$100 million. At the FPAA, its leaders argue that they’ll face unjustified costs and “disruption to business due to the controversial border inspection mechanism, which acts as a technical barrier to trade.”

According to the new agreement, 92 percent of Mexican tomato trucks will be subject to quality control inspections. The Department of Commerce, which worked with the Florida Tomato Exchange to end the Suspension Agreement in May, argued that the inspection centers would help to prevent imports of tomatoes of poor quality or poor condition that have price suppressive effects for the entire tomato market in the United States. That hasn’t settled well with Jungmeyer and his constituents.

“Because of the increase in tomato inspections, the importers’ tomatoes will require up to an extra 24-48 hours in staging at the border. Holding tomatoes adds costs and reduces shelf life. It is a completely ridiculous set of requirements that amounts to a Technical Barrier to Trade (TBT),” said Jungmeyer.

The FPAA has also pointed out that in addition to the $100 million-or-so bill for warehouse spacing, importers and stakeholders in the U.S. will be hit with bills amounting to another $50 million relating to fees and other costs, such as needing to hire more workers to inspect at a higher rate than normal. According to Jungmeyer, an average bill to inspect a truck is $210, but then you add more workers–up to four more inspection employees per truck–and you end up with more fees than intended.

Another issue hanging over the new deal is lack of protections over importers and exporters if inspections take longer than expected. The new inspections could create a logistical nightmare, especially since 120,000 trucks go through the border every year, each one needing to be inspected at an average of 90 minutes.

The agreement states that the inspectors from the USDA will finish their checks within 48 hours of being notified, or within 24 hours if their inspectors are already in the general area of the border’s ports of entry.

But adding this time will reduce the integrity of the imports and limit overall shelf life, especially considering the fact that from harvest to distribution center, a tomato has about a week to keep its freshness.

“The inspection requirement is simply untenable. From facilities to the personnel required, to the delays in the flow of tomatoes to market,” said economic consultant Luis Ramirez. “It seems odd to hear that up to 24 hours is acceptable. The work by the U.S. and Mexico to date has been to reduce the time of the inspection process while ensuring that security and safety measures are met. This does nothing to protect the consumer but rather a small number of producers in Florida. It just does not make sense and I understand the frustration of the producers in Mexico and the importers in Arizona and in other states.”

According to Jungmeyer, this all would set off a chain reaction at the border, backing up not only tomato trucks but other commodities as well. And with the heaviest part of produce season kicking in at the same time as the inspections–mid-March of 2020–shooting USDA inspection up from 15 percent to 28 percent, a lot of industries will feel the strain.

“If I’m a citrus importer, and I’m used to getting my inspections done in four hours, the USDA may not get to my citrus if tomatoes are needed to be inspected first,” he says. “Other services will be slowed down including deliveries. We’re looking at the prospect of trucks and trailers and driver capacity being harmed.”

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In a previous report from the , roughly half of today’s labor-intensive jobs will be done by machines by the middle of this century.  One industry that’s already become acquainted with robots is the American auto industry. 

Now, Ford Motor Company has introduced a new collaborative program with its Ford and Lincoln dealerships across the country, and secondary and postsecondary institutions, focusing on raising awareness around career opportunities in the automotive industry.

Available through Earnhardt Ford, students in Mesa Community College’s Automotive Technology program will be able to take advantage of courses that enhance an interest in the industry for long-term careers, especially in service technician roles. The program is free of charge and provides training around Ford/Lincoln vehicle systems by completing web-based training through a learning management system.

“MCC students who complete the program will have inside knowledge of specific Ford automotive training,” said Stephen Skroch, MCC Automotive Service program director. “The additional training enhances our current curriculum and provides our program graduates an additional competitive edge when seeking employment.”

The courses in the program are linked to current courses taken by technicians at Ford dealerships. Students who complete the training are encouraged to continue on toward a career in the automotive technician industry.  The students can start out with entry level automotive service technician roles at a Ford/Lincoln dealership following training and move up from there.

The MCC Automotive Service Program lets students earn Certificates of Completion honors as well as Associate degrees while learning how to diagnose, service, test, and repair the more detailed and complex computer-controlled automotive electrical systems under the hoods of Ford and Lincoln vehicles today.

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The Phoenix area continues to rise as one of the top cities in the country to attract million-dollar businesses. In its annual major-city-by-major-city list of the country’s best places to bring in million-dollar companies, Lending Tree stuck Phoenix right in the middle of its roundup at 25 out of 50.

Fueled by key investment deals, surging startups, and expanding offices of major companies, Phoenix continues to develop its position as an attractive business location. And while 25th out of 50 places Phoenix in the middle of the pack, the report also highlighted key data that points to more growth moving forward.

Between 2014 and 2016, the Greater Phoenix area saw a 6.2-percent uptick in companies with revenue of at least $1 million, translating into 1,211 businesses with revenue in the million-dollar range, and illustrating the area’s welcoming environment for small businesses.

A 2018 report from the U.S. Small Business Administration shows small businesses make up the vast majority of Arizona enterprises. As of January 2018, 99.4 percent of Arizona businesses had under 500 employees.

“Phoenix is going to be a market where people compare us to places like Austin and Denver and Dallas. All we need to do is have strategic investments, like workforce, and taxes, and ROI projects, to set us apart,” said Jim Rounds, economic consultant and president of Rounds Consulting Group, Inc. “The larger the economy becomes, the more small businesses we will see and we’re seeing a bigger entrepreneurial push.”

“Many of these million-dollar firms likely remain in the small business category, based on the U.S. Small Business Administration’s size standards. Revenue limits for small businesses range from $750,000 to $38.5 million, depending on the industry in which the company operates,” according to the LendingTree report.

The number one spot on Lending Tree’s list was Austin, the central Texas capital city that has garnered plenty of attention in the last decade as a hub for tech startups and major companies slipping out of Silicon Valley. 

Austin’s population boom fueled much of its economic and business growth of the last decade, and Arizona is surging too. Between 2010 and 2017, the Austin area saw a 34-percent jump in population, while USA Today recently plugged Arizona as number eight on its report of fastest-growing populations by state in the country, including a 1.7 percent increase in 2016, more than twice the national average at that point in time.

“You have demand for businesses and you have a demand for startups that supply support for workers. We’re luring more of those folks who want to start a business and we need to grow in quality, not just quantity in the business world,” said Rounds.

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Internet security firm F-Secure recently published a report covering the current landscape of cybersecurity attacks and data hygiene in the United States. The report, “,” revealed nearly three billion separate attacks had hit individual Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the first half of the year alone, a surge of 300 percent.

To combat the growing issue around cybersecurity in everything from IoT to social media to U.S. elections, security firms are trying to stay ahead of the curve with efforts to strengthen their research and development departments, coming up with solutions to help keep threats away. 

One of those companies is global cyber protection agency Acronis International, which has raised $147 million to make acquisitions, grow business more aggressively, and expand on its engineering. The data recovery company nabbed investment funding from Goldman Sachs at a valuation of more than $1 billion.

The company, which has a reach across the globe including split headquarters in Switzerland and Singapore, is using those investment funds here in Arizona, where it has a presence in Scottsdale. The company will soon see a new building open in Tempe’s thriving Tempe Town Lake business district, where it will be pumping $50 million into research and development projects around more sophisticated cybersecurity technology.

According to Gaidar Magdanurov, Chief Cyber Strategy Officer, Acronis’ R&D team in Arizona is working on several strategic projects including:

• Acronis Cyber Platform that enables third-party developers to customize, extend and integrate cyber protection into their solutions
• Acronis Cyber Infrastructure that provides the most cost-efficient and secure environment for running cyber protection solutions and data storage.
• Acronis Cyber Cloud that enables service providers and enterprise IT to deliver cyber protection services to end customers.

In July, Acronis announced it was investing in the new Tempe digs while doubling the investment of its Scottsdale office to $20 million to hire more staff to build out artificial intelligence (AI) solutions and blockchain projects.

It’s been a big year for Acronis, which reported 20-percent business growth last year and is looking to hit 30 percent by 2020.

“The revenue plan depends on the implementation of new capabilities in products, including capabilities for partners to integrate Acronis Cyber Platform, and the team in Arizona is at the core of those developments,” explains Magdanurov.

The global cybersecurity company is hiring engineers in Arizona as well as investing into joint programs with Acronis SCS – an independent software vendor and distributor for the public sector in the U.S. that is based in Scottsdale. Acronis SCS is hosting a for its new initiative to decrease veteran unemployment and strengthen the cyber workforce. This initiative is in partnership with New Horizons of Phoenix and the Arizona Coalition for Military Families.

Acronis also expects to bring on new teams and technology to help build out the development of its products, including cyber protection solutions for things like data safety, privacy, authenticity, and accessibility. Additionally, Acronis will use some of the funds to develop more data centers and focus on acquiring other companies to speed up development of its product portfolio.

Currently, Acronis has more than five million consumer customers around the world as well as 500,000 separate business customers.

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A bipartisan group of Arizona lawmakers recently penned a to top congressional leaders urging a permanent repeal of the medical device tax. The Arizona Congressional Delegation members who signed the letter, including U.S. senators Martha McSally (R-AZ) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and seven members of the House of Representatives, are all cosponsors of the Protect Medical Innovation Act, which permanently repeals the medical device tax.

According to Sen. McSally’s office, a return of the tax would raise health care costs on the consumer. The medical device industry in the state of Arizona supports 400,000 jobs as well as $3 billion to the state’s economy.

The consortium of advocates trying to repeal the tax argues that the medical device tax reduces industry investment and research and development while also cutting down the opportunities to boost tech innovation and reducing patient access to them. The members, including Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican representative from the state’s 6th district who co-signed the letter, also point out the pain this tax inflicts on small businesses and startups in the medical technology space.

“Arizona has become an innovative hub for medical technology. The overhang of the device tax can stymie investment in this industry that benefits not only our community, but also the patients that receive the technology,” said Schweikert.

“A permanent repeal would provide certainty for a critical segment of the economy and would encourage innovation in an industry that quite literally saves people’s lives,” said Garrick Taylor of the Arizona Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ of Commerce and Industry. “When you tax something, you typically get less of it—in this case, life saving inventions.”

Of the 6,500 medical device manufacturers in the United States, roughly 80 percent of them come in at fewer than 50 employees. What’s more, the medical technology industry in the U.S. witnessed a veritable plummeting of jobs with 29,000 roles axed while the tax was in effect from 2013-2015, according to the . And, seeing that Arizona is getting more recognition as a medical device and , this could do way more damage than intended.

“We have seen the negative impact the tax can have on this life-saving industry,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is ultimately the patients who rely upon these innovative technologies who will suffer the burden of this tax if it goes back into effect.”

Before the device tax was put on hold, the IRS brought in close to $2 billion a year between 2013 and 2015. Currently, there are 247 co-sponsors in the U.S. House and 34 members of the Senate, including 10 Democrats. At the beginning of 2018, Congress suspended the tax for two years, helping to prevent major cuts to more than two million American medtech jobs. But McSally, Sinema, Schweikert, and others are pushing for a long-term solution that doesn’t have to be revisited every couple of years.

The lawmakers called on Congress to come together to prevent the tax from being brought back and told leaders that they “stand ready to work with you to accomplish this goal.”

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Mayo Clinic has been expanding its footprint here in Arizona since spreading out from its Minnesota homebase. The nonprofit academic health care network, which has Arizona locations in Phoenix and Scottsdale, doubled the size of its Phoenix campus last year through a $648 million project that added 1.4 million square feet of building space, increasing its clinical capacity, support services, and infrastructure.

Earlier this summer, Mayo Clinic began offering tech-savvy options for patients who live in more rural areas, and now Mayo is taking tech a step further with a recent announcement about teaming up with Google to help change the way health care is provided to communities of all kinds throughout the country.

The 10-year partnership, announced last week, will leverage new technologies to help patients gain more streamlined access to medical services around the country. Google will be opening up its Cloud platform for Mayo to use advanced cloud computing, data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Mayo Clinic is working on nearly 200 AI projects at all campuses in Arizona as well as Minnesota, and Florida.

“With one of the most robust sources of clinical insights in the world, Mayo Clinic is well-positioned to lead digital transformation in health care,” said Christopher Ross, chief information officer, Mayo Clinic in a statement. “Our partnership will propel a multitude of AI projects currently spearheaded by our scientists and physicians, and will provide technology tools to unlock the value of data and deliver answers at a scale much greater than today.”

The collaboration brings together clinical knowledge from Mayo Clinic with data security expertise from Google to help provide solutions. In the past decade, hospital systems have moved patient records from paper to digital, creating a data cluster that is costly to store and a little confusing to use as hospitals and health care networks rely on multiple software programs that don’t flow from one to the next. Hospitals are needing to find new ways to gather and organize that data in order to be analyzed more efficiently and provide new solutions for treatments.

Health care systems have begun investing heavily in their own data storage, but have created a growing cost for increased capacity and improved cyber security. The partnership between Mayo and Google will help to advance virtual care through AI-enabled digital diagnostics.

Google Cloud will take the reigns of storing and securing the data from Mayo Clinic’s system while navigating through cloud computing technologies. Mayo Clinic will manage access to all data by using institutional controls and authorize the use of data in projects in order to create new health care insights and solutions.

Currently, Mayo Clinic is highlighting two major AI projects here in the Phoenix area. One project focuses on teaching Google Photos how to automatically find tumors in clinical images. According to Jim McVeigh, Public Affairs for Mayo Clinic, this project, led by researchers Kristin Swanson Ph.D. and Ross Mitchell Ph.D, searches for the most accurate solutions to identify tumors and differentiate between other objects in medical imaging.

Another project deals with creating a new AI-powered microscope for clinical imagery to help brain cancer patients. With accurate and patient-specific solutions, AI can help leverage clinical MR images and come up with ways to target tumors.

“Clinical imaging is at the center of care for brain cancer patients, as it provides insight into the day-to-day changes in the tumor burden and location,” said McVeigh. “Yet, clinical imaging, like MRI, fails to tell us the answers to the most important questions: where are all the tumor cells; what part of the tumor will be vulnerable to the treatment we want to deliver; and when is the best time to deliver that treatment.”

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Local entrepreneurs and small businesses have a tough time getting things off the ground, especially in areas where resources, or proximity to resources, are limited, like in rural parts of the state. But the Arizona Hispanic Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ of Commerce is looking to bridge that gap through a recent grant it received, which will allow minority business owners and entrepreneurs access to funding in order to better serve their communities.

The Arizona Hispanic Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»­ of Commerce recently landed a $650,000 grant to make it easier for these business leaders to get their projects going, even in areas where it’s hard to access financial support. The two-year grant is the American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian grant, commonly referred to as the AIANNH Project from the Bureau of Minority Business Development Agency inside the U.S. Department of Commerce. It will be used to develop trainings, workshops, and provide additional technical support to communities that fall under the AIANNH umbrella.

“With this grant we saw it as a way to work with another partner for another part of our community, the Native American community. About 26% of the chamber members identify as Native Americans, so this was a natural fit,” said Kaaren-Lyn Graves, Senior Business Consultant for the HCC. “What we want is revenue generating businesses creating jobs that can be sustaining and long-term with livable wages for our rural communities.”

According to a 2016 from the Center for Global Policy Solutions, the racial gap in business ownership is costing the U.S. as much as $300 billion in lost income and as many as nine million jobs. In another report from the Kellogg Foundation, it’s predicted that by 2050, the majority of the working-age population will be non-white, with a combined 39 percent of the population identifying as Hispanic, Native American, or Pacific Islander. This illustrates a huge opportunity for investment in minority small business owners.

What’s more, the latest census data shows that minority-led firms grew by nearly 59 percent from 2007-2012 in Arizona. This included 63 percent for Hispanic-owned businesses. The trend is expected to continue in the 2020 census.

However, according to Graves, regardless of race or color, starting a business or finding funding for a new project comes with its own broad list of challenges.

“With entrepreneurs, they don’t know where to start. They have an idea, but nowhere to go,” she said. “We encourage them to get incorporated and have a revenue generating business entity. And after that part, now what? They need access to capital. That’s a big challenge.”

The grant money is currently available for small businesses and entrepreneurs in the AIANNH community in Arizona. It’s a centralized approach to funding small businesses and stripping away the various roadblocks that come with not knowing where to start.

And besides just writing checks and releasing the money for those who receive funding, the HCC is also offering up workshops and development training for business owners who need help fine-tuning their business skills and getting connected with others in their entrepreneurial community.

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The U.S.-China trade war has taken its toll on everything from cattle to citrus to manufacturing.

But two other commodities in Arizona are suffering economic hits of their own: cotton and pecans. The former represents about $105 million in export value for Arizona, and is on the state seal. The latter, while not necessarily a traditional major player in trade with other countries, has seen a higher demand from China. The country has increased its demand for large in-shell pecans, which has spurred on production in multiple states in the U.S., including here in Arizona where an estimated 26,000 acres of pecans are in production.

Pecan and cotton farmers in Arizona have started to suffer as a result of the constant back and forth of the trade war with China. Prices on these crops have fallen the past few months as a result with no end in sight. Now, farmers and organizations, like the Arizona Farm Bureau, are speaking out.

“Arizona exports 70 percent of its cotton, of that, 20 percent is sent to China. With these statistics, it is easily said that the current trade war with China is greatly affecting our agriculture producers,” said Tyler Davis, Government Relations Manager for the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation. “In an already unstable market, farmers and ranchers are seeing the lowest incomes in recent history.  This poor market coupled with the trade war is making for an unpredictable and struggling year.”

Back in June, prices for cotton were seeing an average of about 95 cents per pound. Since then, the prices have plummeted to a meager 62 cents per pound. 

Before the trade war began, farmers in Arizona were exporting more than 20 percent of their crops to China.

For pecan farmers, they’ve seen a mirrored issue in the price for their crops, bearing witness to a major roller coaster drop from $3 a pound to under $2 a pound.

After retaliatory tariffs were put into place last year, there was an immediate dip in pecan prices of nearly 40 percent. Revenue losses reflected anywhere between $900,000 to $1.6 million, a major hit for medium-sized farmers. Before the trade war started, Chinese importers were flooding their storage rooms with about 100 million pounds of pecans. Now, they see about nine million pounds.

Much like importers who began purchasing items like bell peppers and cucumbers here in Arizona instead of tomatoes during the controversial end to the Tomato Suspension Agreement, Chinese importers have either been buying less pecans or opting for substitutes.

The Trump administration is still in negotiations with their Chinese counterparts and recent threats of tariffs have been pulled back or limited. Some economists say that all China has to do is wait it out, the ball essentially being in their court instead of the United States’. And while China waits, pecan farmers and cotton farmers are seeing their fields and their pocketbooks dry up.

And while a $12 billion aid package from the Trump administration to farmers across the country has put a bandage on the bleeding, Davis sides with the farming community in arguing that they would much rather be in a market-driven landscape.

“A mutually beneficial agreement needs to be struck between the two countries and the tariffs need to be relinquished. The United States and China have the largest economies in the world. It is in the interest of both countries to find common ground where each country wins,” said Davis.

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Arizona’s technology sector continues to heat up with new startups and being executed or planned practically every quarter. The “,” as it’s been dubbed many times over, keeps welcoming in not only new companies but also new research hubs that represent innovation at the educational level.

One of those new research centers is Infosys Ltd, an IT services company based in Bengaluru, India, which provides software development, maintenance and independent validation services to companies in multiple industries including finance, insurance, and manufacturing. The company announced the inauguration of a Technology and Innovation Center at its temporary location at Arizona State University’s Scottsdale Innovation Center, or SkySong.

Infosys plans to hire 1,000 local professionals by the year 2023, adding to its 10,000-plus roster of American workers throughout the country. The new workers at SkySong will focus on areas such as autonomous technologies, Internet of Things (IoT), data science, cybersecurity, and full-stack engineering.

“The inauguration of our Arizona Technology and Innovation Center is an important milestone in our efforts to help American enterprises accelerate their digital transformations,” said Salil Parekh, chief executive officer Infosys, in a statement. “Today’s inauguration marks our sixth Center opening in the United States, allowing Infosys to seamlessly collaborate with our clients across the country in an agile manner.”

The new center houses a number of labs that boost research in virtual reality, augmented reality, and robotic technologies. The goal for Infosys, besides boosting its employee footprint and becoming a leading company in the tech industry in the state, is to develop cross-functional solutions to what’s fueling the business landscape throughout the world. This includes areas like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and user experience.

Artificial intelligence, for example, is changing the business world and customer relationships altogether. When you apply AI to software, a normal customer relationship management system turns into a self-correcting and -updating system. AI also plays a role in technologies like shipping, supply chain, logistics, and autonomous cars, which have made their mark here in Arizona, taking over our streets and highways with everything from self-driving commercial trucks to passenger vans.

New Arizona employees at the Infosys labs at SkySong will be able to complete degree programs and continuing education courses through ASU in order to bridge the STEM skills gap.

“At SkySong, we look at the future of learning and educational technology. We have a lot of companies that have specialties in that field. They see this as their southwest hub for their customers, like Infosys,” said Grace O’Sullivan, Associate Vice President of Corporate Engagement and Strategic Partnerships with ASU’s Knowledge Enterprise. “Their clients will want to be close to them too, which will attract them to come here. They can also make connections with other companies and startups here.”

Operations at SkySong as a whole have pumped a cumulative $403 million in gross state product, and another $272 million in labor income and $36 million in state and local tax revenues. All combined, this comes out to a projected economic output of more than $1 billion by 2022.

“SkySong has always been a place for tech and innovation ecosystem to thrive. It’s the spirit of SkySong to have companies to start their ventures and launch then grow from there, even large global companies can use us the same way a startup can,” said O’Sullivan.

Hiring is underway at the new Infosys location, but its new employees will be heading to the ASU Novus Innovation Corridor next year.

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