Nashville becomes another pro-business hub poised to siphon jobs away from NYC, biz leader warns

Look out Florida and Texas — Tennessee wants a slice of New York City’s pie, too. Nashville is emerging as yet another pro-business powerhouse poised to take jobs away from the Big Apple — as socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes tax hikes and other policies critics say are driving companies to flee, the head of an influential New York business group warned Sunday. “I think the most important thing as we get into the latter portion of this year is that the City Council starts to think about the fact, with the mayor, that New York City is on a trajectory that we’re less and less competitive every single day,” Steve Fulop, CEO of the Partnership for the City of New York, said Sunday on 77 WABC Radio’s “Cats Roundtable.” “Dallas and Miami and Nashville are actively pushing strategies to take jobs away from [NYC],” Fulop told the show host and billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis. The warning comes as a growing number of financial heavyweights and major corporations have already begun shifting their workforces to lower-cost states – while Mamdani, a democratic socialist who campaigned on a freebie-filled progressive agenda, continues floating a menu of tax increases. His proposals include higher income taxes on the wealthy, increased estate taxes and steeper corporate levies. But taxes aren’t the only factor pushing businesses across state lines, according to Fulop. “I’m not only talking about taxes, [but] bureaucracy and layers of reporting and more difficulty to run a business,” he said. “All of that stuff layers on top of one another and makes it pretty difficult to run a business in New York City.”The concerns aren’t just hypothetical. Earlier this year, Wall Street giant Apollo Global Management revealed plans to establish a second US headquarters somewhere in the Sunbelt – with Nashville landing on a shortlist, alongside locations in Texas and South Florida. While Apollo execs have yet to announce a final deci...