OPINION EDITORIAL
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
CONTACT OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
202-482-4883
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
Opinion Editorial, The Hill
"Laying a Foundation to Double Our Exports, Increase Competitiveness"
As 2011 begins, the American economy is stronger than at any time since the Great Recession began in December 2007.
Retail
sales just had their strongest quarterly gain since 2001. Private
sector employment grew every single month in 2010, with the
manufacturing sector posting its first increase in annual employment
since 1997.
These are strong indications that the steps President
Obama took to foster economic recovery are working — beginning with the
Recovery Act and continuing through the December 2010 tax-cut package.
But
that’s not to suggest that anyone within the administration or the
Commerce Department is satisfied — not with unemployment still over 9
percent.
As we move forward, policymakers should remember that
the most important contest is not between Democrats and Republicans, but
between America and countries around the world that are competing like
never before for the jobs and industries of the future.
Making
the U.S. more competitive will require us to focus on two things:
supercharging innovation and selling more American-made goods and
services around the world, so that U.S. firms can hire more workers and
reinvest in the research and development they need to keep growing.
Although
the private sector will take the lead on innovation, we can’t forget
that the government has always had an important, supportive role to
play, and the Commerce Department is engaged in a variety of areas.
Our
Economic Development Administration (EDA), for example, is making
investments to help local communities develop regional innovation
clusters. Just like Silicon Valley is an IT mecca and the Route 128
corridor in Boston is a biotechnology hub, we’re working to bring
universities, businesses, government and nonprofits together in one
place — like the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, which EDA and other federal
agencies recently awarded $129 million to develop an innovation cluster
for Energy Efficiency Buildings — to build around a region’s unique
strengths.
The Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications
and Information Administration, meanwhile, just finished awarding 230
grants across America to fund the construction or upgrade of 120,000
miles of broadband networks. This will dramatically improve America’s
communications infrastructure, while enhancing its competitiveness on a
host of fronts — connecting small businesses to global markets, rural
doctors to university medical centers and inner-city students with the
world’s top universities.
At Commerce, we’re also reforming the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, accelerating patent evaluations so we
can get new technologies into the marketplace quicker and improving
patent quality to prevent inventors and other patent holders from being
tied up in years of costly and often unnecessary litigation.
The
common denominator in all these efforts is that the Commerce Department
is creating a foundation — investing in basic infrastructure and
research, creating standards, making regulatory reforms — that will spur
private-sector innovation and growth.
At a time of strained
budgets, we’re making sure every dollar is spent wisely — a lesson I
learned well as Washington State governor, serving in the aftermath of
the dot-com crash.
We’re taking the same approach when it comes to encouraging American exports.
Last
year, President Obama launched the National Export Initiative, which
seeks to double U.S. exports by 2015, supporting several million
American jobs. The rationale here is simple: the more that companies
export, the more they produce. The more they produce, the more workers
they need. And that means jobs. Good paying jobs here at home.
Commerce’s
International Trade Administration (ITA) is playing a lead role in this
effort, working to directly connect U.S. businesses to more customers
abroad, and helping knock down barriers — ranging from tariffs to lax
intellectual property protections — to make U.S. businesses more
competitive in foreign markets.
Last year alone, we helped 5,400
U.S. companies achieve a new export success, over 90 percent of which
were small- and medium-sized enterprises.
ITA’s export promotion
efforts, along with others throughout the government and in the private
sector, are starting to pay off. Exports were up 17 percent last year
and contributed as much to U.S. GDP growth as consumer spending.
We’re
going to keep building on this success. In fact, next week I will be
leading a trade mission of 24 U.S. high-tech companies to India to help
them make inroads in a country that now has a middle-class larger than
the entire United States.
U.S. companies have world-class goods
and services desired the world over — and this administration will be
doing everything we can in 2011 to make sure that desire is met.