Spain and the United States - Real Instituto Elcano

FOREIGN TRADE 81
The former Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, raised Spain’s
profile in the United States as a result of his close ties with the first
administration of George W. Bush and his support for the war with Iraq. Aznar
made a particular point of visiting many of the Hispanic states, such as New
Mexico, Texas, California and Florida, but this has made little, if any,
difference to Spanish exports other than one-off phenomena such as
temporarily boosting consumer products at the expense of France, which
became unpopular for opposing the war (French fries were briefly dubbed
“freedom fries”).
Despite the common language, Spanish exporters have only been able to
scrape the surface of the fast-growing Hispanic market of more than 40 million
people (see Chapter 5). They have had better luck in Mexico, where the largest
number of Spanish speakers in the world live. Spain’s market share of
Mexico’s imports is 1.3%, almost three times that in the United States, despite
the fact that the Mexican market is dominated by the United States (65%
market share).
The Hispanic market in the United States has not so far proved to be a new
“El Dorado”. There are, of course, some not very important exceptions such
as brandy, nougat (turrón) or some canned foods (vegetables and meats),
which wholesale importers like Goya Foods, based in Secaucus, New Jersey,
have brought to the Hispanic market. Hispanics, most of them from Mexico,
tend to maintain their own unique culinary preferences and in general
have Americanised tastes. The Hispanic market is far from being a
homogeneous market, something that is not fully appreciated among Spanish
exporters. The Latin American community that has the closest links with the
“mother country”, because it was the last colony that Spain lost and also
because it received many Spanish immigrants, is the Cuban community, which
is largely concentrated in Florida. Trade between Spain and Miami-Dade
county, where around 8,500 Spaniards live, is more than $1.2 billion a year.
Carbonell’s olive oil, a favourite among Cubans for many years, is the market
leader in Florida, but in the rest of the United States it does not have a
significant presence.
Just as ethnically we can speak of some products in terms of Hispanic,
Asian, African-American, white or Jewish markets, so the US market as a
whole is divided geographically. More than just a single market, the United
States is a network of submarkets each with their own special features. This
makes it difficult for Spanish exporters to break into the US market, as they
have to do their homework well and find the geographic area (many of which,
like California, have a population almost as large as Spain’s) with the best
potential. The obvious entry points – New York and Miami – are not always