Crossing Borders: Bahrain Business Development with Palm Beach, USA
Gulf Insider’s Charlie Cooksey interviews Alfred Zucaro, Founder & President of the World Trade Center Palm Beach.
Alfred Zucaro shares the World Trade Center Palm Beach’s plans for the cross-border business development with Bahrain, international trade, opportunities and benefits, and how tourism, education, and business tie together.
Alfred is making great efforts in opening up trade, business, investment, and educational opportunities between Bahrain and Palm Beach County in Florida, which is ultimately a great opening into the USA and the Western Hemisphere.
What do you do at the World Trade Center Palm Beach, Florida?
I am the founder and president of the World Trade Center, Palm Beach. This means that I am one of the license holders for the World Trade Center Association, which is the world’s largest private trading association. There are over 325 license holders from around the world in about 90 countries.
There are no two World Trade Centres that operate exactly alike. It is a license, not a franchise. But the bottom line is that it’s always gauged around the idea of developing international relationships, business and finance opportunities, and extending into educational opportunities; that’s how I got involved with Bahrain.
I’m a lawyer by training and trade. However, I don’t practice law anymore. I work with investment visas through the EB-5 visas with the US government and immigration platforms. I’m also a former politician.
What brought you to the island of Bahrain and what did you see as an attraction to grow and build a business relationship between these two places?
In October 2020, I had the opportunity to meet the trade representative from Bahrain here in Florida, Rose Sager. We became quite involved in the idea of opening up discussions for trade opportunities.
At first, I focused on finance in South Florida, particularly Palm Beach county, because we have become world-class in attracting finance companies from all over the US, and in some cases, from international destinations to the point where we’ve been dubbed the Wall Street of the South. I investigated your FinTech organization in Bahrain and Rose and I continued to develop the idea.
In December of that year, I met representatives from the Bahraini Businesswomen’s Society, University College of Bahrain, and AmCham in a webinar, which led to an opportunity to invite the ambassador from Washington DC to explore the possibilities.
The synergy between Bahrain and Palm Beach is remarkable. We are population sizes equivalent. Florida offers low tax circumstances. Bahrain has no tax circumstances except for VAT. The business environment here in Florida doesn’t put many obstacles on people entering and starting businesses; it’s the same with Bahrain. I’m very impressed with Bahrain.
As a US company, I could go to Bahrain, establish a presence there, and do business throughout the entire GCC without tariffs, duties, etc. One of the things that attracted me the most recently was that AmCham and the Bahrain India Society held an event focusing on the free trade agreement between the US and Bahrain to encourage Indian business-owned companies interested in establishing themselves in the US. I thought that was an incredibly open opportunity to address that particular desire and provide a pathway without getting too political. Florida is one of the easiest places to establish oneself.
I call it the free state of Florida because we are not imposing upon people mandates or lockdowns. The economy is open and the state is attracting businesses from all over the US. I wanted to expand it to attract businesses from international destinations and Bahrain an incredible opportunity. I’ve been pursuing it for well over a year, leading up to the recent seminar on February 16 designed to attract a delegation to travel to Bahrain and have face-to-face meetings.
Is Florida is becoming a hotspot that many people are moving to, either business-wise or to retire?
Florida was a retirement community, but it’s not one any longer. On a statewide basis, it is doing an incredible job of attracting businesses. Palm Beach County is doing a yeoman’s job of bringing people from all over the world onto our business development board. The entry into the US through Florida is important.
What is the objective exactly that you want to achieve? What would business owners in Bahrain achieve by being involved in the cross-border business development between Palm Beach County and Bahrain?
I define international trade or international business in a broad sense. Some people focus on attracting a business, getting them to make an investment, getting them to create jobs, improving the economy, etc. To me, the first step is to build relationships.
Therefore, for the last year, I have been attempting to build relationships and open up people’s minds to the possibility of spending some time investigating why Florida, Palm Beach and Bahrain – and I think we are being very successful.
The design of February 16th’s event was to allow voices from both sides of the equation in common areas to give a 30,000-foot overview as to what’s going on in each of the marketplaces. Which was then followed up with connecting people by publishing their contact information. My team will encourage continuing conversation to explore the possibilities that may come of it.
I don’t think that the measurement of success is the number of deals that get identified and consummated because of the conversation that took place. I think the measurement of success is how many conversations will get started because of the efforts.
Why Palm Beach, South Florida? Is it correct that it is the best place in the US to move to and start something in the easiest way possible without regulations and all linked taxes?
That is correct for the State of Florida in general. For Palm Beach, first of all, its moniker is world-renowned. Everybody understands the phrase Palm Beach. Second, I think that it’s important to recognize that Palm Beach county is a destination for great wealth. We have a folk tale that suggests that 25% of the world’s wealth passes through the island at some point during the year. It’s not an unfamiliar place. The third and perhaps most important is that I’m very parochial with regards to Palm Beach county, and a little less parochial about Southeast Florida. Southeast Florida has truly become an international destination, made up of Bay County, Broward County and Palm Beach county. Our business development board is second to none in attracting opportunities. It is growing by leaps and bounds.
The logistics of Palm Beach county, the efforts of our business development board and the awareness of the global entrepreneur establish us as a place of great interest.
I’m attempting to tell the story of Palm Beach County to an audience that most of the business development efforts here do not talk to. Hence, internationally, Bahrain presents an opportunity to tell that story through the Gulf Consortium and beyond. It’s a marketplace that, I think, is very attractive and very compatible with what we’re doing.
Tell us briefly about the recent webinar and the travel delegation from Florida to Bahrain.
First, I would refer anybody interested to look at our website. When rose and I began this last year, we were designing a delegation to travel to Bahrain in November, but COVID has caused everything to go upside down and people to be very apprehensive. So, after the event that I did with the ambassador here in Palm Beach county in August, I think it was I decided I was going to go to Bahrain without the delegation, just to open up an opportunity. Rose was incredible in being able to get me an audience with a lot of the business decision-makers and education people.
I was also able to meet the heads of AmCham, Kaiser law firm, the Indian Business Society, the Bahrain Businesswoman Association, etc. face-to-face on that 10-day trip to Bahrain. It was an incredible expansion of my impression of the Middle East. Sitting in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, Bahrain – it was like I could have been sitting in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, Miami. There are different cultures, but Bahrain is an incredibly open society. I’m hoping to bring business leaders to meet the business leaders that I have on a one-on-one basis, to continue dialogue on what is possible and why our two communities should merge together.
Is there a specific event here whilst you have the travel delegation that perhaps other people that are watching can be involved and attend physically?
Firstly, February 16th to March 25th is a very short window of opportunity to be able to do the logistics and underwrite the cost of a trip to Bahrain. So, I’m trying to keep that as inexpensive as possible. Secondly, COVID presents a challenge because there is still a great deal of anxiety in people to travel internationally, especially when you could do things over Zoom.
As to the event, Rose and I are working a number of things; she is reaching into some of the government agencies that she has a commitment with and I am talking to the US embassy to host something while we’re there.
When will you be extending an invitation or creating a delegation for people in Bahrain to be visiting Florida?
I organized a delegation to travel to Bahrain in March, and then sometime around September or October, when the weather breaks in both our locations, we invite people from Bahrain to travel to South Florida.
Ideally, it will be September-October for a delegation travelling to Bahrain. But between now and then, we would be working very hard to facilitate those conversations that lead up to those important things. Rose and I are also working on attracting the attention of the Governor. We have talked with people that enterprise Florida, and we are hoping to be able to get the Governor to consider a Memorandum of Understanding between the State of Florida and the Kingdom of Bahrain – a highly sought-after objective by the Embassy.
Is there anything you’d like to add for any of our readers that may be interested in the cross-border business development?
One subject that we didn’t touch on at all in our conversation was the subject of higher education. One of the things that most impressed me when I attended that event at the American University of Bahrain was the thesis to have students act as emissaries for Bahrain. I think that is an incredibly wise thing to do.
I am very encouraged by the higher education institutions here in Palm Beach county specifically, but Florida in general. All are interested in facilitating and providing student travellers. To me, one of the precursors to developing business is who delivers the story, and students are a great fit to do that. We will be concentrating significantly on business and we will include how students impact that. That’s the underlying strength of this meeting to show how tourism, education, and business are all tied together.
