David McNew/Getty ImagesAnd this effort will extend throughout my administration: Secretary Locke is issuing guidance to all senior government officials who have foreign counterparts on how they can best promote our exports. Secretary Clinton is mobilizing a commercial diplomacy strategy, directing every one of our embassies to create a senior visitors business liaison who will manage our export advocacy efforts locally, and when our ambassadors return stateside, we’ll ask them to travel the United States to discuss export opportunities in their countries of assignment.> We’re also announcing more than 40 trade and reverse trade missions that are scheduled for this year. The Department of Commerce, for example, has sent a trade mission to India this week; Secretary Vilsack is off to Japan on April 15th. So advocacy is going to be critical.
New opportunities, new markets for U.S. exporters
Third, we’ll unleash a battery of comprehensive and coordinated efforts to promote new markets and new opportunities for American exporters.
Many businesses want to export their products but just don’t have the resources required to identify new markets or set up shop overseas. And that’s where we can help.
We’ll bring together the Ex-Im Bank, the SBA, the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture, and the Trade Development Agency to set up one-stop shops across the country and in our 250 embassies and consulates abroad, to help American businesses gain a foothold in the fastest-growing markets with the most demand.
And we’ll provide a comprehensive toolkit of services –- from financing to counseling to promotion –- to help potential exporters grow and expand.
We’ll create public-private partnerships to help firms break into new markets with the help of those who have been there –- shipping and supply-chain companies, for example. And we’ll increase funding for existing promotion efforts. We’ll increase funding for the International Trade Administration at the Department of Commerce, and strengthen the USDA’s ability to connect farmers with new overseas markets.
So we’re going to increase financing, advocacy, and assistance for American businesses to locate, set up shop, and win new markets. Those are the first three aims of the National Export Initiative.
Trade agreements must be fair to U.S. businesses
The fourth focuses on making sure American companies have free and fair access to those markets. And that begins by enforcing trade agreements we already have on the books.
When I ran for President, I promised that when the United States of America puts its name to an agreement, that agreement will be as good for workers as it is for businesses, including strong labor and environmental protections that we’ll enforce. My administration is living up to that promise.
Ambassador Kirk has been doing an extraordinary job as our United States Trade Representative, and he’s been working to knock down barriers that unfairly keep American companies from markets we belong in, hold our trade partners to their labor and environmental obligations, and crack down on practices that blatantly harm our companies.
But keep in mind, the United States offers some of the world’s lowest barriers to trade. That’s why we can often get more out of a trade deal, because our borders are largely already open. And when we give other countries the privilege of that free and fair access, we can expect it in return.
Moving forward with trade agreement negotiations
That’s the spirit in which we’ll move forward: So we’re going to continue to work towards an ambitious and a balanced Doha agreement -– not just for the sake of any agreement, but for one that enhances market access for American agriculture and goods and services. We’re going to strengthen relations with key partners, specifically South Korea, Panama, Colombia, with the goal of moving forward with existing agreements in a way that upholds our values. And we will pursue negotiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership that we launched last year with some of the most dynamic economies in Asia -– negotiations that I believe will result in a new standard for 21st century trade agreements that aren’t just good for workers, businesses, and farmers, but also consistent with our most cherished values.More aggressive protection of U.S. intellectual properties
What’s more, we’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property. Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people. It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century.
But it’s only a competitive advantage if our companies know that someone else can’t just steal that idea and duplicate it with cheaper inputs and labor. There’s nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it –- we just want to make sure that it’s licensed, and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately.
That’s why USTR is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses, and that includes negotiating proper protections and enforcing our existing agreements, and moving forward on new agreements, including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
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