The Trump Administration Thursday that Israel and the United Arab Emirates had come to an agreement normalizing relations between the two Middle Eastern nations. President Trump took to Twitter saying, “HUGE breakthrough today! Historic Peace Agreement between our two GREAT friends, Israel and the United Arab Emirates!”

Outlined in a made by all three nations is a rough patchwork for the vision of bilateral Israeli-UAE relations moving forward. 

In the coming weeks they will meet to sign “agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit.”

Rocky past

Historically serving as a broker of peace in the region, the United States has struggled to bring majority-Muslim Arab states to the negotiating table with Israel. 

To date only two other Arab nations have normalized relations with Israel: Egypt and Jordan. 

President Bill Clinton’s Oslo Accords, signed in 1993 (and a second part in 1995), seemed to be a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian-Arab relations. The Accords’ aims never materialized, however.

American diplomats, as well as Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, celebrated Thursday’s agreement as an “enormous, historic step forward,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.

Negotiators hope that this venture in diplomacy stands as a bedrock for further normalization of regional relations.

What’s in the deal?

According the joint statement released by the White House, Israel has agreed to:

• halt plans for annexation of certain regions of the West Bank which it has declared sovereignty over;
• allow Muslims to freely worship at the Al Asqa mosque and “Jerusalem’s other holy sites”; and
• focus on normalization of relations with other Arab states.

The United Arab Emirates will:

• fully recognize the state of Israel, normalizing relations with the nation; and
• collaborate with Israel on vaccine development, economic growth, and more.

Both the UAE and Israel have agreed to join with the United States “to launch a Strategic Agenda for the Middle East to expand diplomatic, trade, and security cooperation.”

Vaccine development

Renowned as a global hub for medical innovation, Israel has been at the of COVID-19 vaccine development and testing.

With Thursday’s announcement comes the promise that Israel, the UAE, and the United States will be able to work collaboratively to develop and test potential coronavirus vaccines and treatment options.

Commercial expansion

A steadfast, reliable economic partner of the United States, Israel has both benefited from and contributed to the bilateral commercial health of both nations. 

According to the U.S. Embassy in Israel, between the two states has increased “ten-fold to $49 billion in 2016” since 1985, when the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement took effect.

“Israelis now invest close to $24 billion in the United States, nearly triple what it was a decade earlier,” the embassy notes.

Commonly known as “Start-Up Nation,” Israel’s job creator friendly regulatory environment has enabled them to in start-ups per-capita. 

“With a population of around 8.5 million, it has the largest number of startups per capita in the world, around one startup per 1,400 people,” Kristina Velan of APEX magazine said.

An economic engine in the Middle East, the potential partnership with the UAE can only expand both nations’ economic and geopolitical prowess.

Arizona’s moment

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey in 2019 the opening of the Arizona-Israel Trade and Investment Office in Tel Aviv, a venture championed at the state Legislature by state Rep. Tony Rivero, R-Peoria. 

Glenn Hamer, CEO and president of the Arizona �鶹��ýӳ�� of Commerce and Industry that, “Israel is known worldwide as the Startup Nation. Arizona is the Startup State. Arizona and Israel are a great match.”

With Thursday’s news, Arizona is poised to benefit from expanded Israeli commerce and a less tense Middle East.

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A bipartisan bill making its way through Congress could be a major step forward to expand modern border security technology to help streamline commerce, safeguard intellectual property and derail criminals along the Southwest border. 

Expanding technology like autonomous towers, ground sensors, electro-optical cameras, lasers, chemical detectors, X-rays and other devices would aid U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in carrying out its two-fold mission: to facilitate trade and protect national security, proponents of the bill said.  

“Our bipartisan bill improves border security technology to help strengthen security and keep Arizona safe,” said Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who introduced the bill in the Senate along with Texas Senator John Cornyn (R). 

Continuing to modernize technology along the heavily trafficked border is particularly important for Arizona, which relies heavily on trade and supply chains with Mexico, said Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Arizona �鶹��ýӳ�� of Commerce and Industry. 

“The trade flows between Arizona and Sonora and the rest of Mexico are central to the state’s overall economic health,” Hamer said. “Data reveals that Arizona trade with Mexico in 2018 was over $16 billion, a 7.7% increase from the previous year.”

Bill would assess technology gaps “mile-by-mile”

The bill, the Southwest Border Security Technology Improvement Act of 2020, would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to assess the technology needs along every mile of the 2,000 mile border in conjunction with physical barriers. 

Under the legislation, Homeland Security would take a more detailed look at emerging technologies, including manned and unmanned aerial systems, tower-based surveillance technology, and tunnel and other detection devices. DHS also would be required to consider and examine the impact of public health emergencies like the coronavirus on border security. 

The analysis would help the agency strengthen terrorist prevention, reduce criminal activity and explore new technologies, the co-sponsors said.

DHS would be required to report back on areas where improvements could be made. A border security technology plan then would be developed to procure or develop identified technologies. 

The bill recently cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and now is on its way to the full Senate. A mirror version of the bill was introduced in the House last week by Rep. Xochitl Torres Small (D-N.M.) and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).

Among those in support of the bill are the Border Trade Alliance, the Border Patrol Council and the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the nation’s CBP officers and trade enforcement specialists.

U.S. investing in unmanned towers, sensors, imaging technologies 

Over the past few years, border agencies have been investing more in emerging commercial technologies for more efficient operations and capabilities.

In the past two years, Homeland Security has been investing in , formerly known as Innovative Towers, that operate off-grid with 100 percent renewable energy and provide autonomous surveillance operations 24 hours per day. CBP recently entered into a contract with “virtual border wall” startup Anduril for over 140 unmanned surveillance towers to put in place in 2021 and 2022.

The agency also is testing technology at ports of entry that will allow CBP personnel to see an image inside commercial trucks at a border crossing before drivers pull up for inspection. The technology would make it easier for officers to make faster and better informed decisions about which cargo trucks to stop for more thorough inspections.

To read the bill in its entirety, go to: .

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The Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association recognized Arizona leaders who impact the state’s tourism industry, and ultimately its economic prosperity.

The honorees were presented at the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association’s (AzLTA) Arizona Tourism Unity Dinner earlier this week.

“Ours is a vast industry comprised of world class resorts, hotels, sports teams and venues, airlines, attractions, arts, culture and culinary and hundreds of businesses supplying goods and services to the entities- an economic ecosystem that is truly the lifeblood of our great state,” said Kim Sabow, Arizona Lodging & Tourism Association president and CEO.

Sabow was the emcee for the Unity Dinner along with Jaime Molera, partner at Molera Alvarez.

Molera told the attendees, “All of you here tonight are instrumental in our mission, elevating our industry’s voice of advocacy and enhancing the operating environment of our businesses.”

Michael Bidwill, Arizona Cardinals president, received the Honoree of the Year award for his contributions to Arizona and its tourism industry.

“This state, and I think everybody here- I’m singing to the choir- this is the best state in the United States,” Bidwill said.

Bidwill was instrumental in facilitating Arizona’s hosting of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015 and attracting Super Bowl LVII set for 2023.

“We’ve got great infrastructure. That airport, the sports facilities we have, all the great resorts and spas that we have here, the restaurants. It’s such a wonderful place to visit throughout the year,” Bidwill told attendees.

Don Brandt, Pinnacle West Capital Corporation chairman of the board, president and CEO and Arizona Public Service chairman of the board and CEO, received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

“His effort with institutions such as the McCain Institute, the Phoenix Art Museum and Greater Phoenix Leadership have strengthened the arts, culture, quality of life and economic development milestones for our great state,” Molera said.

“I’ve got a team of 6,300 around the state. It’s an honor to accept this award and I wouldn’t be here without them whether they’re in Douglas, Arizona or Yuma or Flagstaff or Globe mountain or here in Phoenix. It’s those men and women that get out and carry the flag and do so much for the communities,” Brandt said.

Visit Tucson, the convention and visitors bureau for Greater Tucson, was honored as the Tourism Leader of the Year.

Brent DeRaad, Visit Tucson president and CEO, invited his team on the stage to accept the award alongside him.

“We’ll always market, sell and promote the destination but what it comes back to is being engaged in the community,” DeRaad said.

The Arizona-Mexico Commission (AMC) was honored as AzLTA’s first Global Partner of the Year.

“The Arizona-Mexico Commission celebrates 60 years of such work in strengthening impactful ties with Arizona’s number one trade partner and tourism partner,” Molera said.

The AMC collaborates with Mexico, especially Sonora to strengthen economies and improve the quality of life for those on both sides of the border.

“All of you know that the Arizona-Mexico Commission directly contributes to our state’s prosperity. We need to enhance and enrich it,” said Jessica Pacheco, AMC board president.

She said, “I ask you all this evening to help us in ratifying the USMCA agreement. If you see any of our congress people, please ask them to ratify the agreement. It is imperative to increasing and enhancing our prosperity.”

The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is the intended to succeed NAFTA, and it is expected to expand Arizona’s economy and strengthen trade with Canada and Mexico.

Westroc was recognized as the Hotelier of the Year. State Sen. Sean Bowie of District 18 and State Sen. David Livingston of District 22 were honored as the 2019 Tourism Advocates.

The Arizona Tourism Unity Dinner was held at the JW Marriott Scottsdale Camelback Inn Resort & Spa.

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Government and business representatives from along the Arizona-Mexico border met at the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas in Nogales, Ariz., Friday to discuss commerce-related concerns for the region.

“What I really want… is to learn what we need to do specifically — when it comes to Nogales, when it comes to Douglas, when it comes to our border communities — to make sure that we’re doing everything possible so that this region can continue to prosper,” said Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Arizona �鶹��ýӳ�� of Commerce and Industry.

“This whole area is an incredibly vibrant community,” Hamer said. “It’s leading the way for the state of Arizona.”

State infrastructure, especially in the border region, has been of prime concern for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, said Juan Ciscomani, senior advisor for regional and international affairs at the governor’s office.

“He respects and appreciates this area; that’s why he’s been here quite often,” said Ciscomani, who also serves as vice chair of the Arizona-Mexico Commission (AMC) board.

Ducey included funding in his fiscal year 2020 state budget plan for a cold storage inspection facility on the border in Nogales, he said.

“The relationship overall with Mexico has been a key priority for the governor, and [the AMC has] been saying and demonstrating that for now almost five years,” Ciscomani said.

Guillermo Valencia, chairman of the Greater Nogales and Santa Cruz County Port Authority, started off the discussion by describing the interconnected nature of the Nogales communities on each side of the Arizona-Mexico border.

“As a community, Nogales, Arizona, doesn’t stand by itself,” Valencia said. “Nogales, Sonora, is a very important part of our community.”

“Our students go to school there; your students come to school here,” he said. “We go to church there; they come to church here. They come to our parks here; they come to our stores here. We go to the dentist over there; we go cut our hair over there. There’s a big synergy that goes on between both communities, and we depend a lot on each other.”

Friday’s discussion focused on issues affecting businesses that depend on cross-border trade for success, specifically the produce and manufacturing industries.

The Tomato Suspension Agreement, a  between the United States and Mexico that kept tomato supply high and prices low, ended May 7, resulting in a 17.5 percent tariff on tomatoes.

“We’re now facing down duties this week,” said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. “A typical tomato company in Nogales… could be facing $500,000 in cash deposits per week just to stay in business. So, you multiply that over the course of a year, and you can see that it’s very difficult for companies to remain in this business.”

On the other hand, there are new opportunities on the horizon, Jungmeyer said, such as the proposed cold storage inspection facility in the governor’s budget.

“That’s an opportunity to bring in items that we’re not touching at all right now,” Jungmeyer said. “We barely bring in any berries at all, and that’s one of the fastest-growing items out of Mexico. There are other temperature-sensitive items that don’t come to Nogales at all. That’s going to open up a huge opportunity, so it’s a small investment that could pay off for years and years and years, and so that gives us opportunities to promote the corridor and the wait times and system improvements.”

The local port authority in Nogales follows the business community’s lead to determine what the most important challenges are, said Bruce Bracker, vice-chairman of the board for the Greater Nogales-Santa Cruz County Port Authority and supervisor for Santa Cruz County’s third district.

First and foremost, Nogales ports of entry — DeConcini for vehicles and Morley Gate for pedestrians — are extremely shorthanded, leading to long delays crossing the border into the U.S. from Mexico, Bracker said.

“Both of these ports of entry just are not equipped to deal with the needs of today,” Bracker said. “They were built 20, 30 years ago… they’re a floodplain, they don’t have enough passenger vehicle lanes, they don’t have enough pedestrian lanes, and it’s choking our downtown.”

Nogales is losing retail business on both sides of the border because residents don’t want to risk an excessive wait to cross, Bracker said.

“They don’t know what they’re going to get when they walk up to the border — whether it’s going to be a 15-minute crossing, a 20-minute crossing or a two-hour crossing,” he said.

Another issue is that the International Outflow Interceptor (IOI) — the sewer line from Nogales, Sonora, to the Waste Treatment Facility in Rio Rico, Arizona — needs to be upgraded. Misael Cabrera, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, is  to improve the line, Bracker said.

“We’re a great community; we’re a clean community,” he said. “Our air is clean, and our water is great. We just need to make sure that we protect our infrastructure so that it stays that way.”

Issues such as outdated infrastructure and extended wait times at the border impact the region’s economy in both seen and unseen ways, Valencia said.

“There are people that say, ‘I won’t go. I won’t use it… I won’t cross the border,’” Valencia said. “And they eliminate that from their plans, so that hurts.”

Workforce shortages and border wait times are affecting the local manufacturing industry as well, said Joshua Rubin, account manager at Javid, a Nogales, Arizona-based maquiladora founded in 1983.

Mexican maquiladoras are unique to other manufacturers in that they operate under  established to lower production costs for U.S. manufacturers. Production equipment can enter Mexico duty-free, and finished products can be exported to the U.S. from Mexico at lower tariffs than from other countries.

“The maquila industry, we’re growing,” Rubin said. The industry is expanding, and Javid is seeing more clients than ever before, he said.

There are about 3,000 vacant jobs in the maquiladora industry now, even with an employment increase of 4,000 employees in the past year, Rubin said. As the industry continues to grow, the need for a larger workforce supply grows, too, he said.

“One of the big things that we’re noticing is that a lot of the U.S. companies are seeing the talent that there is here in Mexico,” Rubin said. “It’s a little bit cheaper to be able to manufacture down here, so we have customers that are sending a lot more of their product line down here.”

One of Javid’s clients is even closing down its Pennsylvania facility in favor of having 100 percent of its operations in Mexico, he said.

“The population growth is at a lower pace than the demand for new employees of the maquiladora industry right now,” said Humberto Ramírez, vice president of Javid. “We do need the regional increase of people coming up from out-of-state to come to the borders to look for better-paying jobs, especially now that the minimum wage at the border line increased to double, and it’s a lot higher than it is in the rest of the country, so we can compete salary-wise with the rest of the country.”

One unintended consequence of Mexico’s  near the U.S. border — the result of sweeping economic changes by the country’s current  — is that lower-wage jobs are now approaching or even surpassing the wages of entry-level manufacturing jobs, Ramírez said.

“The Oxxos, the supermarkets that were paying way below the industry — because of this minimum wage increase, all of a sudden they were at the same level,” he said. “They’re competing with us, which created a spiral of turnover… so we’re just adapting to those [changes].”

Now, the maquiladoras want to hire migrant workers from other parts of Latin America, Rubin said.

Companies are hiring, and migrants want to work, but it is difficult for migrant workers to obtain work visas because they are often undocumented and do not have the necessary identification, he said. Many migrants also hope to move on to the U.S. rather than stay in Mexico, he said.

The mayor of Nogales, Sonora, is “100 percent in support” of maquiladoras hiring migrants, but the industry — which makes up about 55 percent of the GDP in Nogales, Sonora — needs Mexican immigration services to get involved so workers can obtain visas, he said.

In total, there are about 100 to 120 maquiladoras employing more than 42,000 workers in Nogales, Sonora, Ramírez said.

Kevin Adam, rural transportation liaison for the Rural Transportation Advocacy Council, said infrastructure — statewide and at the border — needs immediate improvement.

“We’re under-investing by more than a billion [dollars] a year statewide, and that is no more evident than at the border,” Adam said. “Douglas has a plan; they need the funding for it to go. San Luis — same thing.”

Adam said he fears the issue will not be addressed until the state sees a noticeable loss of revenue, which could create “tremendous problems” for the border region.

“At the same time, [there is] tremendous opportunity for economic development if in fact you do see the positive changes,” he said. “We need the infrastructure down here to be a selling point for trade; we don’t need to be shooting for minimal standards.”

Adam and Jungmeyer pointed to State Route 189, which will see , as an example of much-needed infrastructure improvement projects.

It took seven years to “cobble together” funding for SR-189, said Gail Lewis, director of the Office of P3 Initiatives and International Affairs at the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT).

Luis Pedroza, finance director for the city of Douglas, said his city suffers from many of the same issues as Nogales.

“The city of Douglas, we’re running out of space; we need more space,” Pedroza said. “That’s why we’re asking for a new port of entry. Those are our issues plaguing us.”

Mexico is Arizona’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade of $16.6 billion in 2018, and visitors from Mexico contribute 60 to 70 percent of sales tax revenue in Arizona border communities,  the Arizona-Mexico Commission.

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