Charles Boustany Jr., partner at Capitol Counsel and former representative from the state of Louisiana, and Jennifer Hillman, senior fellow for trade and international political economy at CFR, and Daniel H. Rosen, partner at Rhodium Group, will discuss the findings of the latest CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report on China’s Belt and Road Initiative and implications for U.S. economic security, climate change, and global health interests.
FASKIANOS: Thank you, welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations State and Local Officials webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, Vice President of the National Program and Outreach and CFR. We’re delighted to have participants with us today from 36 U.S. states and territories. Thank you for taking the time to join us for this discussion, which is on the record. As you know, CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher focusing on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. Through our State and Local Officials Initiative, we serve as a resource on international issues affecting the priorities and agendas of state and local governments by providing analysis on a wide range of policy topics. We’re pleased to present to you today the CFR sponsored independent task force report on China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States. So we have with us, our project director, co-project director of the report, Jennifer Hillman, and two members of the task force, Charles Boustany and Daniel Rosen. And these task forces are independent, they are bipartisan and they are co-chaired by a Republican and a Democrat. So this task force was co-chaired by Jacob J. Lew and Gary Roughhead. So I am going to introduce our speakers today and then turn to them on to talk about the findings and recommendations of the report. And we are eager to hear from all of you with your questions and comments.