Good afternoon, everybody. It’s an honor to be again at Georgetown – my legislation college alma mater. I wish to thank the McDonough College of Enterprise for bringing us collectively for an necessary dialog on U.S. competitiveness and impression – specifically, impression on fairness and resilience. This convention couldn’t be timelier.
For the primary time in a long time, we now have a generational alternative to put declare to the aggressive industries of the longer term, together with the good-paying jobs and financial safety that can include them. But it surely’s going to require authorities, enterprise, staff, and communities to work collectively in new and revolutionary methods, and it’ll require the personal sector to contemplate nationwide competitiveness and financial safety as a part of their company social duty.
Earlier this yr, I traveled to Upstate New York to go to the Albany Nanotech Advanced on the SUNY Polytechnic Institute—a complicated R&D facility, led by NY CREATES, a useful resource for public-private and tutorial partnerships. The power focuses on commercialization tasks, enabling entry to semiconductor design and prototyping for startups, smaller companies, and universities, in addition to serving to to draw funding for entrepreneurs.
Alongside this effort is SUNY’s Profession Alignment Platform Initiative, partially funded by the Commerce Division. It supplies college students and staff with coaching and assist by way of the Nanotech Advanced, in addition to sturdy college partnerships with Traditionally Black Faculties and Universities and different premier analysis universities, with the intention to entry jobs within the chips {industry}. This ecosystem is laying the groundwork that can assist to create a whole bunch of latest chips corporations and construct a world class semiconductor workforce proper right here within the U.S.
The personal semiconductor {industry} is taking discover: Micron Expertise has already dedicated to construct a semiconductor manufacturing advanced – a chips cluster – in Syracuse. Now, being a Georgetown grad, I’m not usually one to tout Syracuse. However the ecosystem that Syracuse is constructing is spectacular – and one in all many examples we’re seeing across the nation.
That is how we are going to construct again our industrial base and a robust center class – not with silver bullets — however with authorities, enterprise, academic establishments, and communities rolling up their sleeves and creating the situations that can drive innovation, entice funding, and develop high quality, middle-class jobs.
Removed from selecting just a few winners or losers, trendy American industrial technique is about constructing ecosystems that allow extra winners.
This isn’t the way it has all the time been.
GOING BACK BEFORE GOING FORWARD
For years, policymakers pursued deregulation and tax cuts—fairly than investments in industries, infrastructure, communities, and staff—as methods for creating jobs and elevating wages.
Their assumption was {that a} rising tide would raise all boats.
However as an alternative, too many People had been left behind.
For his or her half, companies prioritized cost-savings and short-term positive factors, didn’t think about dangers to provide chains, and exported jobs overseas. Manufacturing employment fell, our industrial base was hollowed out, and we had been saddled with provide chain bottlenecks.
Actual wages decelerated and protracted inequality reached traditionally excessive ranges.
Our workforce was left undertrained and saddled with rising childcare and training prices.
After which the COVID-19 pandemic, local weather shocks, and Russia’s conflict of aggression towards Ukraine laid naked our vulnerabilities. It grew to become clear that this short-sighted strategy to industrial competitiveness had left us much less productive, much less resilient, and fewer succesful.
Whilst we search to handle these vulnerabilities, our opponents and buying and selling companions should not standing nonetheless. They’re shifting forward with strategic public investments, together with personal investments, in their very own home manufacturing, together with in semiconductors and different rising tech.
Some are additionally utilizing use unfair subsidies and dumping and changing into more and more subtle at discovering loopholes in our antidumping and countervailing obligation legal guidelines.
Our adversaries are ever-more aggressive of their efforts to manage provide chains that we depend on – together with important minerals – and expropriate important applied sciences.
Put merely, they’re taking part in by a special algorithm. The Biden-Harris Administration knew early on that if we stood nonetheless, we’d fall behind. America wanted a brand new strategy to fulfill the problem of the second.
BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION APPROACH
That’s why we now have taken daring steps to rebuild and put money into our industrial base, bolster our resilience to threats from adversaries and local weather change alike, and chart a path to long-term development.
Identical to the development of the primary transcontinental railroad within the 19th century, our strategic investments in rising applied sciences within the post-World Battle II period, and the event of the Interstate Freeway System within the Fifties and 60s, the federal authorities, in partnership with companies, staff, universities, and different stakeholders, is as soon as once more seizing a once-in-a-generation alternative.
With the passage of the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Discount Act – all main legislative accomplishments of its first two years – the Biden-Harris Administration is making transformational investments in manufacturing innovation, analysis and growth, infrastructure, workforce coaching, and group growth.
We’re focusing these public investments and leveraging personal funding in key areas reminiscent of semiconductors and clear power applied sciences the place personal {industry}, by itself, had not factored in our nationwide and financial safety pursuits. We’re working with enterprise not solely on what they put money into, however in how they function, encouraging methods of doing enterprise that get essentially the most out of our workforce by way of high quality jobs and mitigate local weather dangers. The objective with all of this to allow the American personal sector to do what it does finest – innovate, scale, and compete.
DOC’S AGENDA IS AT THE HEART OF U.S. INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY
The Division of Commerce is taking part in a central function within the Administration’s industrial technique to drive U.S. competitiveness, innovation, fairness, and resilience. Our division’s agenda is targeted on:
- investing in manufacturing innovation, particularly in areas important to our nationwide and financial safety.
- investing in our workforce and folks; and
- forging high-standards, strategic partnerships with allies overseas.
INVESTING IN MANUFACTURING AND INNOVATION
First, investments in manufacturing innovation in key sectors which are important to rebuilding our industrial capabilities, financial resilience, and geostrategic benefit.
The bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that President Biden signed into legislation in August supplies $50 billion to the Commerce Division to revitalize our home semiconductor {industry}. We’re administering this funding by way of our new CHIPS for America program.
The funding will drive R&D and manufacturing incentives that can facilitate home manufacturing of essentially the most superior chips and increase manufacturing of mature chips important to our nationwide and financial safety.
Investing in chips may have spillovers throughout a number of sectors of the economic system, from family home equipment to protection capabilities, from the power sector to transportation – all whereas driving innovation, enhancing productiveness, and rising good paying jobs.
These investments will even foster native ecosystems throughout the nation with a concentrate on native financial growth and fairness. As we assist construct out semiconductor clusters in communities throughout the nation, we’re enlisting producers, suppliers, and customers in addition to universities and analysis establishments. The objective is to foster situations for these clusters to be extra the norm than the exception.
Just like CHIPS, below the Inflation Discount Act, the Administration is making the largest-ever federal funding in clear power innovation and leveraging personal capital to scale clear applied sciences of the longer term—from electrical autos to scrub hydrogen to offshore wind. That is how we’ll cut back our dependence on risky commodities, and defend towards the prices of the local weather disaster.
INVESTING IN OUR WORKFORCE AND COMMUNITIES
The second precedence space is investing in our workforce to unlock the complete potential of our nation and people–including girls, communities of shade, in addition to our rural and tribal communities. These investments are as necessary to our competitiveness as investments in roads, bridges, and home manufacturing.
We ignore this at our personal peril. The Kellogg Basis’s analysis, as an illustration, signifies that the U.S. economic system might be $8 trillion {dollars} bigger by 2050 if we eradicated racial disparities in well being, training, incarceration, and employment.
We’re deploying practically $50 billion below the Bipartisan Infrastructure Regulation to convey reasonably priced, dependable high-speed web to each American, with a devoted concentrate on equitable entry.
We’ve additionally awarded $500 million in grants below the Good Jobs Problem, below the American Rescue Plan, to assist industry-led training and coaching alternatives.
We additionally not too long ago introduced that the Commerce Division’s Minority Enterprise Growth Company—the one federal company created particularly to foster the expansion of minority-owned companies in America– is teaming up with the Treasury Division to deploy $100 million in State Small Enterprise Credit score Initiative Technical Help funding. This program will assist shut the entrepreneurship hole in America by offering underserved entrepreneurs with the instruments and expertise to entry capital and to entry networks of assist. Please keep tuned for extra data.
“WHERE” WE INVEST IN INDUSTRIES AND COMMUNITIES MATTERS
For all these investments – in CHIPS, clear tech, high-speed web, or the Good Jobs Problem – the place and the way we make investments issues a fantastic deal. A key component of the fairness agenda is guaranteeing that we’re investing in all varieties of areas of the nation – city and rural, coastal and heartland – and leveraging the personal sector to search for funding alternatives in locations they could have missed up to now.
That’s the reason a central function of our industrial technique investments is a place-based strategy that seeks to leverage the aggressive benefit of various communities and areas.
We’re constructing on the Commerce Division’s a long time of expertise as a middle of excellence for financial growth, clusters, and place-based initiatives to cut back geographic inequality. As an example, below the American Rescue Plan, the Commerce Division launched the billion greenback Construct Again Higher Regional Problem to put money into a brand new sort of group growth that helps enterprise, labor, native authorities, and academic establishments, and leverages personal capital.
The 21 awardees, introduced in September by President Biden, will present tens of 1000’s of staff with new expertise to adapt to altering know-how and entry good jobs – from coal communities in West Virginia to Native communities in South Dakota, from biotech clusters in Oklahoma to a regional power hydrogen hub in Louisiana. They’ll present start-ups with funding to develop and develop into financial turbines. And so they’ll assist analysis establishments develop into aggressive enablers for regional economies.
EXPANDING OUR INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
The third precedence space for the Commerce Division is enhancing and increasing our worldwide engagements that profit each our allies and our staff.
Meaning increasing export alternatives, together with for women- and minority-owned companies, and attracting overseas direct funding in strategic sectors like clear tech, semiconductors, worldwide training, and agriculture.
The U.S.-EU Commerce and Expertise Council, the Quad, the Indo-Pacific Financial Framework for Prosperity, and the Americas Partnership for Financial Prosperity are all examples of strategic partnerships we’re forging with companions world wide. With them, we’re growing shared guidelines of the highway and establishing excessive requirements throughout commerce, know-how together with AI, cybersecurity, local weather motion, workforce growth, labor and surroundings, and anti-corruption.
We’re additionally supporting high-standard infrastructure investments in Africa that in flip will create export alternatives for U.S. companies.
These financial partnerships that increase requirements with different our companions will forestall the race to the underside on labor rights and environmental requirements that characterised the period of globalization and outsourcing. They will even be sure that our corporations have entry to important inputs and supplies, and that provide chains are resilient and diversified. Meaning we will probably be higher in a position to keep away from manufacturing facility furloughs and handle the prices of shopper items.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR’S ROLE
As I discussed on the outset, our nationwide competitiveness and financial safety is about greater than what investments the private and non-private sectors are making in important applied sciences. It additionally about how companies operate–how they’ll innovate merchandise and processes, strengthen their enterprise fashions, assess and cut back their carbon footprints, and guarantee their workplaces are various and inclusive and their staff are engaged.
From my conversations with CEOs and small enterprise house owners alike, I do know that lots of our corporations perceive this
They’re conscious, as a current Gallup Ballot reported, that solely a 3rd of staff say they’re engaged of their work and office. But, companies that prioritize their workforces outperform.
They know, as a McKinsey research famous, that executing environmentally sound methods – in, for instance, water, power, and uncooked supplies – might help fight rising working bills— by as a lot as 60 p.c. And there’s a sturdy correlation between useful resource effectivity and monetary efficiency.
Additionally they know that the enterprise case for variety, fairness, inclusion and accessibility is stronger than ever. Examine after research underscores that various management groups are related to extra and higher innovation and higher monetary efficiency.
Whereas some could unfairly query the relevance of ESG for worth and the bottom-line, American companies know higher and wish to be a part of the answer.
As an example, on job high quality, earlier this yr, personal sector leaders joined the Departments of Commerce and Labor for the launch of a set of Good Jobs Ideas that cowl recruitment and hiring, pay and advantages, job safety and profession development, collective bargaining rights, and dealing situations.
On decarbonization, President Biden launched the First Movers Coalition—a public-private partnership to jumpstart the marketplace for low-carbon applied sciences by way of advance buy commitments. As we speak, the Coalition contains 65 corporations, representing greater than 10 p.c of the worldwide Fortune 2000, in addition to ten authorities companions.
These are simply two examples of the personal sector pushing the frontier of ESG in methods that can make a distinction for his or her enterprise as nicely our nationwide competitiveness. There are lots of extra.
To the scholars right here – you’re the future leaders of American {industry}. So, as we speak, as you talk about and debate the implications of our competitiveness efforts for ESG, and vice versa, I invite you to contemplate how industrial technique—with its investments in strategic sectors like semiconductors and clear tech—will create new alternatives for American companies and staff, and their means to innovate. How ought to enterprise leaders take into consideration nationwide competitiveness and financial safety as a part of company social duty? How can enterprise work successfully with authorities to create the industries of the longer term, whereas defending our nationwide and economic system safety?
The place you come out on these questions and what you do about them will profoundly form our financial future. We’re relying on you.
Thanks for inviting me to hitch you as we speak. I’m trying ahead to our dialogue.