Dear Chamber Members,
There is a comforting story we tell ourselves in Puget Sound. That this place is different.
That we are smarter, more innovative, more future oriented than other cities that rose before us and then fell just as hard. It is a reassuring story, but also a risky assumption.
Because when you look closely, our economy does not resemble a fortress. It looks more like an ecosystem. Complex. Interdependent. Remarkably productive, and more fragile than we care to admit.
A vast majority of businesses in Washington are small businesses, and nearly half of all workers earn their paycheck from one. That’s why the success of large employers and small businesses is inseparable. When a major employer expands, it doesn’t just add office space. It creates new contracts for local suppliers, more shifts for warehouse workers, fuller restaurants, and economic opportunity for more residents. One side of the economy cannot grow without the other.
When a big company pulls back, the same thing happens in reverse.
That reality often gets lost in political arguments about taxing corporations or protecting workers, as if those are separate universes. They are not. The real strength of this region is not any single company. It is the density of the web between them.
By most measures, Puget Sound is an economic success story. We generate more than half a trillion dollars a year in economic output. We are one of the most globally connected trade regions in the country. We attract talent from everywhere. We sit at the intersection of technology, aerospace, clean energy, global logistics, life sciences, arts & culture, and advanced manufacturing.
It is easy to take that kind of success for granted when you are living inside it. History shows it rarely lasts.
Economic decline does not start with collapse. It starts quietly. With apathy. With office vacancies creeping upward. With unemployment ticking up just enough to be dismissed as temporary. With small businesses closing not with headlines, but with handwritten notes taped to windows.
You hear it in conversations before you see it in data. Something feels off. It is harder than it used to be. We are making it work for now.
That is usually how it begins.
Detroit was powered by auto manufacturing, Pittsburgh by steel, Cleveland by industry and logistics. Each was once invincible. Each seemed permanent. These were not sleepy towns, but engines of innovation, places where the future was being built.
When a shift came, globalization, automation, new energy systems, new trade patterns, the ecosystem could not adapt fast enough. At times because of indifference, and at times because past success dulled the urgency to invest for what came next.
The most dangerous phrase any region can say is, “This is how we’ve always done it.”
That phrase is often followed by deferred choices. Avoided tradeoffs. And long-term investment giving way to short-term comfort. The lesson from history is not that decline is inevitable. It is that complacency is.
The question is not whether we are successful today. The question is whether we are doing the harder work required to remain successful when the world changes again, as it always does.
This message is not meant to tell you what to think. It is meant to ask whether the quiet unease many of us have been feeling is worth listening to, before history gives us another reminder we did not need.
This is where the Seattle Metro Chamber’s leadership is essential. Bringing together differing perspectives to build a future that is inclusive, resilient, and grounded in shared responsibility. A future that sees public‑private partnerships as opportunities for collective progress.
I invite you to help us move that vision forward.
Joe Nguyễn
President and CEO
Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce