00:00Thank you, Mr. Cash. You know, during my travels and visit with our embassies abroad,
00:09we always, in a bipartisan way, express our appreciation for the work that they do to
00:15represent our U.S. interests. But I have also been unimpressed with the efforts made to assist
00:22American businesses in gaining market access and competing on an international level.
00:28So I want to ask all panel, what inhibits our current export promotion regime from producing
00:35the results that our companies and constituents desire? Let's start with you, Mrs. Duzanski.
00:44Sure. Thank you. Well, first and foremost is the ability to be competitive. So we need to do a
00:52better job at providing some incentives through Ex-Im, for example, and export financing. We need
01:00to be better cheerleaders for U.S. companies abroad. We need better terms of engagement, which is what
01:07at least some of this tariff negotiation is about, opening up foreign markets in ways that
01:14were not open previously. So we need to do a much better job in terms of setting the conditions for
01:22American companies to be successful abroad and to be able to compete in what is a fair and open market.
01:28That is not what we have now. Thank you. Mr. Norris? Dr. Norris. Yeah, I agree that I think that there's a lot
01:35of variation by country teams. In my experience, I think that some countries do this really well and
01:43others don't. And so studying that variation, why is it working somewhere, why is it not working
01:46somewhere else, would be a useful way to proceed. The thing that I would suggest is you might find in
01:51those places where the country teams are really killing it is going to be a very close working
01:55relationship with the major industries and sectors and private sector players that have opportunities
02:00in their host nations. That's probably not coincidental. In formal mechanisms, a lot of what we're
02:05doing today, I think a number of other panelists have talked about this. We're using these workarounds
02:11to get past some of the institutional design failures that we're currently enmeshed in. So that would be
02:19something else to kind of pay attention to. Thank you. Ms. Cutler? With respect to export promotion,
02:26I think this is an area where State Department could play a more effective role, particularly in our
02:33embassies abroad. And I think this gets back to the whole notion of looking at the foreign commercial
02:38service and the State Department's economic offices. I think if they were merged, then there'd be a lot
02:45of synergies to help promote exports. But also, look, we need an infrastructure to help us promote
02:52exports. It's one thing just to advise companies. But, you know, our companies are competing against
02:57financing that other governments are giving their, you know, their private companies. And again, that
03:03puts our companies who are incredibly innovative and competitive at a disadvantage. So I would urge
03:09the committee to look at those structures as well. Thank you. And just very quickly to agree with all of
03:16that and just say that I think, you know, the problem has really been we haven't had a commitment at the
03:21highest levels that this is really important for our interests, frankly, in the last couple of
03:25administrations. So I think that's the first thing you need a real commitment from the top. I mean,
03:29from the president to why this is important. And then you need finance and you need other removal
03:35of legal constraints like other countries can just go and advocate for a particular country company. We
03:41can't do that. And for, you know, there's an argument about that because we don't want to pick winners.
03:45But I think there's a way between our approach and the French or Chinese approach that that would be more
03:51helpful to getting our products and services forward. Ms. Cutler mentions the and then you also,
03:58Mr. Goodman, financing is another way and our committee is also charged with authorizing or reauthorizing
04:06DFC. So we will address that issue. But other than in addition to that, what suggestion do you have to
04:15improve our export promotion regime? I want to ask the two, Mr. Norris and Davinsky to also address that as
04:23well. Yeah, I think that capital provision is an important dynamic here, not least because we're
04:29dealing with an unfair playing field often. There's either a different risk appetite or a different cost
04:34of capital. One of the things, again, I would, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but I think it is
04:39really important to think about how we can be good stewards of public resources and crowd in private
04:45capital. So things like Ex-Im, when they think about being able to take some of the riskiest tranches
04:50off the table and then the rest of it looks commercially viable. That's the way to kind of get good
04:54leverage and good maximization when we think about those resources. Over. I would just add that I think
05:00we need to focus on the U.S. ground game abroad and that's about bringing together all of the capacities
05:06that we have in key markets of interest to us where we see the big opportunities to expand our
05:12manufacturing and export opportunity. There are a lot of them, but we don't really have a game plan.
05:17Thank you. Let me now give the podium to
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