Miami is positioning itself as a business haven to rival Switzerland, Monaco or Singapore, according to Francis Suarez, the mayor for whom the Florida city’s rise has become a springboard for his wider political ambitions.
The city had an influx of wealth and business during the coronavirus pandemic, in part because of its favourable conditions for companies and high earners. People who reside in the US state for half the year or more pay no individual income tax, and Miami boasts a corporate income tax rate of just 5.5 per cent.
“The world is expanding in terms of financial and economic activity. The world is saying, ‘OK, we need more than one Switzerland . . . We need one in America,’” Suarez told the Financial Times. “Miami is emerging as the Singapore or Switzerland of this new iteration. I call it the capital of capital.”
Suarez said he considered Miami’s peers to be international commercial hubs such as Switzerland (“a place where banking and finance feel safe doing business”), Singapore (“the Switzerland of Asia”), Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh and Doha.
Higher tax US cities such as New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, by contrast, had been “signalling” that they were no longer pro-business, he argued, citing New York’s 2019 rejection of a second Amazon headquarters and Tesla’s 2021 decision to move its corporate headquarters from California to Texas.
Suarez, who has been mayor since 2017, launched a presidential campaign last June on the premise that Miami had flourished under his leadership. He dropped out two months later after failing to draw enough support to qualify for the first Republican debate, later endorsing party frontrunner Donald Trump.
He was open to serving as vice-president if Trump came calling, he said. Because the former president is only eligible for one more term, he noted: “Whoever is the vice-president would theoretically have some sort of leg-up on a possible future nomination. Anyone who doesn’t tell you that they would be interested is probably being disingenuous.”
Suarez, who is Cuban-American in a party whose elected leadership remains overwhelmingly white, has positioned himself to the left of another former presidential hopeful, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, on issues such as abortion and global warming.
He said he would be interested in a gubernatorial run in 2026, when DeSantis’s term expires. “You’re talking about what would be a G20 country, in terms of GDP, in terms of population, in terms of budget size. So that would be an interesting challenge,” he said.
The pandemic catalysed a trend of migration to Florida, drawing in residents fleeing tougher Covid-19 regulations as well as higher taxes and winter weather. In the year to July 2021, more than 220,000 Americans moved to Florida, more than to any other state. Miami’s population grew 12 per cent in 2022 and 14 per cent in 2023.
The city is flush with affluent residents including activist investor Carl Icahn, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, and venture capitalists David Blumberg and David Sacks. The newcomers have boosted state and local tax revenue by 38 per cent from 2020 to 2023, with corporate tax income jumping 78 per cent over that period.
Ken Griffin, the multi-billionaire who moved his hedge fund Citadel to Miami in 2022, called the city, “a growing metropolis that embodies the American dream”.
But the migration has also made Miami the ninth-worst city in the world for traffic, according to data company Inrix, and it is suffering from an acute shortage of affordable housing for non-millionaires.
The median cost of single family houses in Miami-Dade county jumped 48 per cent from 2019 to 2023, according to Miami Association of Realtors data.
Suarez has been central to Miami’s repositioning as a glamorous global centre. His office has limited executive powers — the mayor of Miami is a part-time position, and he works for the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan — but friends and critics often describe him as the city’s “chief marketing officer”.
Suarez has also faced scrutiny for his jobs outside the mayorship, such as accepting $10,000 a month in consulting fees from a property developer doing business in Miami, which he denies has presented any conflict of interest. A county ethics commission inquiry into his acceptance of expensive gifts was dismissed on Wednesday.
His pursuit of growth has had some stumbles, such as his embrace of cryptocurrency. Suarez worked to draw crypto conferences to the city, seeing the industry as an opening to move the city to a more modern and digital economy. He placed a crypto “bull” in downtown Miami, a counterpoint to Wall Street’s famed statue, and announced in November 2021 that he would take his next pay cheque in bitcoin.
“You have a David and Goliath, and that was our slingshot,” he said now. “What did I learn? I think I would have done some more due diligence on some of the projects.”
He noted his support for plans by FTX to move its US operation to Miami had “not matured well” but added that some of the world’s biggest investors had invested in Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, which collapsed in November 2022.
He never sold his bitcoin holdings despite the turmoil, he added, pointing to the cryptocurrency’s recent rise above its previous 2019 peak. “Well you know, so am I a genius now because I took my salary in bitcoin and it’s at an all-time high?”
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