UNM economist says New Mexico is an emerging global player in speech to local business leaders

New Mexico gets a lot of flak for ranking dead last in many national sectors, but a local economics professor is labeling the state as having an internationally emerging economy.

Participating in more accurate measurements that track New Mexico’s position in the global economy would help illustrate this, said University of New Mexico Professor Manuel Montoya, who specializes in global and cultural economics.

He spoke at a luncheon hosted by commercial real estate group NAIOP New Mexico on Tuesday at the Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown hotel.

“My argument to you is that we’re not the 50th state; we are actually the first emerging economy for any number of reasons that make New Mexico very special,” he said, “including the massive and important informal economy that exists within the state of New Mexico, the massive ability for New Mexico to be resilient, despite being colonized dozens of times.”

He said there’s an overall mischaracterization of New Mexico as a state — the state operates in a way that’s “a little bit more sophisticated” than people give it credit.

“New Mexico is often forgotten even as a state, but it is part of the world’s largest military security apparatus. It is part of and a very important historical staging ground for the geopolitics that made World War II and the actual emergence of the United States as a superpower,” Montoya said.

Fast forward, and there’s a discussion about the “West vs. the rest,” or other regions challenging traditional Western powers’ dominance, Montoya said. He specifically brought up groups of emerging market economies known as MINT, or Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey, which acts as a successor to BRICS, or Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Both terms are informal labels for rising powers that hope to change historical narratives and hold greater global influence.

This is how Montoya thinks of New Mexico.

“Frankly, (New Mexico) looks, acts and thinks like the emerging economies that by the end of this century are going to become (epicenters) of the world economy,” Montoya said.

He said he wondered how New Mexico would rank if measured in broader economic terms, like how the Anholt-Ipsos Nation Brands Index ranks different countries by perception. For example, he said, experts could measure the ease of doing business or successfully running a business in New Mexico.

“All of those indicators are international metrics that the United States doesn’t participate in,” Montoya said. “And I think because we spend a lot of our time focusing on the markers that mark us as 50th, we forget some of those indicators that actually put us in a pretty MINT-y space.”