Much of the political debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Ohio has been about which of them dislikes NAFTA more. But perhaps when addressing trade issues in their debate in Cleveland on Tuesday, they should be talking a bit more about stories like this:
The Cleveland Clinic has taken on many of the traits of a hospitality group. Its main campus served almost 3m patients in 2006, bending over backwards for them. A posh international centre offers translators, coffee and foreign newspapers. The clinic owns three hotels and lets the InterContinental hotel group manage them. The most expensive hotel, built in 2003, has space for conferences and plush suites, popular among royal patients from the Middle East.
In addition to importing visitors, each hospital has turned its city into an exporter of sorts. Each is spinning off technologies and start-ups. Mayo has hospitals in Florida and Arizona. The Cleveland Clinic has begun to offer management expertise, for a fee, to a handful of hospitals around the country. It already has facilities in Florida, a “wellness centre” in Toronto and projects under way in Abu Dhabi and Vienna. Cleveland's manufacturing base may have declined, but its main commodity in future may be cardiac expertise.
With this growth has come a steady increase in staff. Cleveland's 37,350 employees make it Ohio's second-largest private employer, after Wal-Mart. ... “One thing to note”, says the Cleveland Clinic's chief executive, Delos Cosgrove, “is that health-care jobs are good jobs.” (emphasis added)
There is no doubt that trade can be disruptive to the economy, as the loss of manufacturing jobs in Ohio and other places makes clear. But as this story shows, these disruptions do not necessarily mean that a city or region will be permanently run-down economically as a result.
