Detroit is ripe for an export boom, Brookings study says

Maybe Obama was on to something when he said he planned on increasing America's exporting potential. According to a new study by the Brookings Institution, Detroit is ripe for a boom in export.

Excerpt from the Detroit Free Press:

From auto parts shipped to Canada to a soccer stadium designed for a South Korean city, metro Detroit firms are among the nation's leaders in exporting goods and services to other nations.

A study to be released today by the Brookings Institution, based in Washington, D.C., ranks metro Detroit ninth among the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas for the dollar volume of its 2008 exports, $26.9 billion. Detroit ranks fifth in export-related jobs, with 239,910 area residents producing goods and services for export, the study said.

Detroit's exports are heavy with auto parts, but increasingly include professional services. As Detroit struggles to reinvent its economy, the potential for service exports to contribute is enormous, said John Austin, a member of the state Board of Education and a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution who contributed to the report.

"It's easy to see car parts moving around the world. We're doing great in Brazil, and GM's doing fine in China," he said. "But we don't see this growth share of our exports to the world in high-end knowledge services -- medicine, design, accounting, deal-making.

"The fact that Detroit is really one of the top places and punches above its weight shows the future of an economy."

Read the entire article here.