good morning. it's a pleasure to welcome you here today whether you are here in person, watching online on youtube or c-span. thank you for tuning in. thank you as well to the event partners and the institute and ronald reagann. building and international trade center. i am the executive director and we would like to say that ifso e don't put the community and trade community we can bring so many of you together in washington, d.c. across the united states t and around the world. ambassador, it is a pleasure to welcome you. you may not realize that you are part of our last in person pre- pandemic event when we hosted you with current deputy director general. your deputy white and our good friend. since that event in february of 2020 we hosted over 120 different panels with almost 25,000 viewers v and 100 differt countries. as we do at a lot of our online events the names of some of those in community even when you can't see them on zoom or on c-span today. welcome to mary thorton at amazon web services, melt milton cunningham, nicole at sdr law and while you're in. welcome mary nelson, nicole and welcome to all of you. if you were watching on zoom we will try to get to view of the questions we were asked online and when we get to the end of the panel we will incorporate those with questions from the audience. we willl dispense with lengthy introductions of the guests who need no introduction starting with my good friend and frequent partner of online events these past few years vice president of the institute. thank you for joining us here again today. and ambassador kathryn it is an honor to welcome you back to the stage. i remember the first time you are with us we were joking about the debut of stranger things and we20 are now in the fourth seasn with more to talk about. welcome back and thank you all for joining us today. [applause] thank you. it's great to be back here and in person having done so many events with the washington, d.c. and international audience. a thrill to bebe here today with my long-term colleague and friend now. i had to look up when you were confirmed and apparently about 15 months ago. for me it seems like years but for you may be decades. but when you look back on those 15 months, what has surprised you the most in the positive sense but also may be in the negative sense and what thoughts do you want to share about the past 15 months? >> you said 15 months and i was going to say seven or eight. that says a little bit about what it's like. it strikes me every day what an honor and a privilege it is in this capacity especially at the time when there is so much going on and so much happening that we didn't necessarily anticipate. so, to the point about being part of the last in person event here, the end of february 2020 and we were just two weeks away at that point from the two year lock down and the pandemic related restrictions and it disrupted period of work and life for all of us. more recently folks on the w foreign-policy side and the intel side but i think many of us were surprised by russia's position and president putin's position to cross over into ukraine and start the invasion and since then i think that there is just challenges we're the global economy. so over the course of this period of time though i think that as hard as it is on all of us and as it is in our personal lives and professionally for our workers and our businesses i think we've demonstrated a can-do spirit in terms of traveling the world and connecting and reconnecting with our partners and rebuilding and building even back better as a lot of our international relationships like the fact we just launched the indo pacific economic framework. last year we spent a lot of time on the relationship and we had our second trade the technology council meeting over the course of last year. we settled the dispute and found a new accommodation on steel and aluminum trade where we made some accommodations but we are working on the forward looking frameworks and both in terms of steel and aluminum trade and sustainable trade so there's a lot going on over the course of this year as we've come out of that initial quiet at the beginning of this year i think for all of us. you have hit the road also the travel has ramped up and i feel like we cannot get enough of us seeing each other and making up for some lost one-on-one face-to-face time. >> you already mentioned the indo pacific economic frameworks, so let's delve into that. first of all, kudos to you and the administration. i think a lot of us did not expect that and now joining us if my math is correct with 13 participants, congratulations on that. but now in many respects the hard work begins. dcan you from a procedural point of view gives a sense of the next steps we've heard about with a scoping exercise and then there may be a minister really and negotiations may begin but maybe you can elaborate more. >> we have interest from the indo pacific partners and it is a lot and i think that you might be surprised if you listen to the skeptics at the beginning saying we don't really know what this is and how interested people are going to be. i think basically when the united states was up and demonstrated leadership and a desire to engage that there is interest and it will be reciprocated. in these next weeks and couple of months i do expect we will go through an exercise where as everyone knows it is not a traditional free-trade agreement negotiation. we are reflecting a biden administration approach which is to bring a more holistic economic engagement in which trade is an important part but not the only part so there are four pillars and others when on infrastructure and one on supply chains and also on tax and anticorruption. and in terms of signing up and being part of the launch as a partner country you just need to know you are interested in the fully participating in onear of these pillars so over the next couple of weeks what we will be doing his deeper dives and answering questions and putting out more details to the vision and collaborating. the collaboration is an important part listening to our partners and i'm hopeful that by this summer we will have a more formalized convening and be able toal kick off the different pillars and let the conversations go at their ownwn pace. the secretary and i both are in complete agreement that this framework needs to be holistic and flexible, adaptable and pragmatic. we need to be able to deliver along the way holding everything together until everything comes together at the end it's about taking issues as we see and then delivering as we go along. >> when you talk about convening to launch the negotiations with the bf convening of trade ministers? >> i thinkor for the trade piece certainly and when we are looking at the panoply of the pillars one of the interesting aspects is the degree to which in some ways this is by design and it forces us and our different traditional silos in the administration to stretch ourselves and more cross disciplinary so it will depend on how the individual governments are organized and structured and agreements within but certainly on the trade pillar i would expect to see my usual counterparts. >> you mentioned this idea of the early harvest and not like the trade talk is the single trade talk. the secretary talked about the supply chain area there's theres urgency to get things moving and early agreements that could be announced and implemented. when you look at the trade society, what issues strike you as candidates for early. before we've brought our trade partners to b the table and head from them so a lot of it will depend on where everybody is and how ready and how on the page we already are. you only know that by getting together and comparing notes into bringing our ideas to the table. on digital what i would say is, yes, i think there is urgency because if you look at the way that we work and live. we don't have a lot of structure from the regulatory policies standpoint relative to the more traditional aspects of the economy here and certainly in terms of international collaboration et cetera there's less architecture here. what i would say the conversation is absolutely agurgent. at the engagement tot look at hw can we work together to make our digital economies trustworthy. part of a confidence building exercise o in terms of rebuildig confidence in the global economic system. and how to make the economy demonstrate. and with interacting with the economy. so let's see what happens when we bring everyone together. >> how about enforcement. i've seen comments from you and your staff that maybe we shouldn't expect the tradition traditional but other thinking is being given to this and in that vein i've heard the term including a corporate accountability element. >> part of the challenge is if you are not doing the reductions the traditional dispute mechanism at the end if you lose a case on the winning side is to suspend your concessions. there will be concessions and commitments to each other. otthose also can be suspended through the traditional mechanism. let's think that through but i do want to raise awareness around the trade practices pushing the envelope on the dispute system as its traditionally been framed and it goes to the fundamental issue of the plaintiff the dispute settlement mechanism. you could think about it as ultimately when you take it to the point of an agreement it's the wayt to ensure what's been negotiated has meaning. that you can't just promise t something and say you are going to do something and then do something completely different. it's an accountability mechanism and if we look at the trade practice that has a very detailed login to the deforestation concerns when we passed that agreement to the rapid response mechanism that is looking at creating a mechanism for ensuring compliance with mexico's labor laws you see this evolution of the mechanism into more cooperative modes and holding accountable not just the other country but also what is happening in the economic ecosystem and whether the participants whether they are logging companies or facilities in the operations that they are abiding by the requirements of the expectations of the agreementnt itself so highlightg in our own practice we've started to evolve away from the settlement mechanism to think about new ways of holding the different participants t accountable for creating integrity incorporated into the agreement. >> one way to hold someone accountable is to have penalties in mind if they don't live up to their obligations and commitments. are you thinking about that with respect to the corporate accountability? >> if you look at some of the examples inbi the case and of te rapid response in mexico there are penalties and consequences for noncompliance with the partner countries and the parametersee of the agreement itself so i think on a broad scale what we are looking to do with this next generation is to look at the incentive structure and t create a set of incentives that are powerful enough that you create incentives both through and i think that in terms of taking the temperature in the economy there is a strong desire to bring backck that sene that the global economy works by the sense of confidence wed use to have but we c need to adapt o the experiences whether it's with of the pandemic or the war on the european continent to figure out how we bring that back and a large part of that is building into the trade relationships and mechanisms for creating resilience and i think it's when we can accomplish the body ends that we are building a morees resilient system and we also need to see more sustainability built in. the degree to which i hear yeareconomic participants and te morere traditional corporate stakeholders talking about looking at the vision for where the economy is going and the need to make sure that there is a runway for continuing to operate and to be productive and provide services and goods for this world that sustainability peace is also critical. >> when they get invited to the thepublic comment for this procs there was a phrase that the cuts basically were not envisioning the cuts at this time that suggest that was a negotiated descendents and there are some folks that are thinking that maybe at some point we would think about the cuts. is that a fair interpretation? >> we do not have the cuts at the table at this time and there's a number of reasons for that. part of it also is a trade practice that has really focused on the cuts to the point where the q average is quite slow so there isn't a lot. if it's never demonstrated what we've got right now is a world economic system that is vulnerable to use the supply chain disruption breakages and bottlenecks let's think about the resilience and sustainability and if there are tools that lets entertain those toolss and think through what it is that we are trying to accomplish. and what other tools we can develop in particular that conversation is one that is important and also needs to be promoting sustainability. >> to work on the 21st century issues when i look at that then the list of issues that are being addressed at the senior level with taiwan there seems to be overlap so can you explain what is the difference between the work with taiwan and thistw new initiative that's been unveiled? >> you can think of it as a spectrum i don't think it needs to be distinct from each other. 1 of the aspects carrying the instruction to rebuild or build up further what kind of relationships do we already have with a number of countries you will probably know the exact number. i think the number is 42. there is already been a system in terms of looking at our economic relationship and strategic relationship in kind of the overlooked assets so whatever the platform is or the engagement is that we have created should be the basis and i saw my counterpart and we came out of that meeting to deepen and expand our trading relationships and you've seen that just in the last week the trade initiative. we will continue to pursue the engagement that makes sense to the different trading partners and i think that for us it's all about substance and the consistency of the vision and the format will depend on the relationship that we have. >> the secretary has joined others in the administration calling into question whether some of the tariffs that we have in place are really worthwhile and useful at this point. many in this room we've been hearing about in the announcement and we are also hearing pressure on the administration to reimpose an exclusionet process. they've given the overall china policy putting that forward which meant we would start hearing other pieces of the puzzle. >> the issue of the relationship is one of the most important onesne and i feel confident that everyone who is in this room works on this issue in some way or another or their work is impacted by this issue so. what is important for the administration is to bring a thoughtful strategic deliberate eapproach to how we manage the relationship overall as you saw inin the speech and that lookedt the relationship and covered a lot a of ground. i think no matter what we will be talking and thinking about china for years to come and in terms of timelines i think that just as everyone here my guess is working on thinking about the u.s. china trade relationship and the challenges we have but alsoha real opportunities we ned to be thinking about. so are we thinking about this in the administration and that's reflective of one of the most important responsibilities we have right now to figure out how to getip this relationship right and nothing about this relationship>> is easy. >> maybe we can then move on to your travel schedule. theex next ten days you are goig to be in a number of different places. >> i will be in los angeles convening the trade ministers later this week in paris and then mc 12 kicks off and on sunday the 12th it's a really important time. there are a lot of things we need to accomplish and a lot of lost engagement to make up for. >> what is your move going into the ministerial in some ways if things were not complex enough there is now the war between the wto members and a some of them are frankly getting a little boring as well. how do you feel going into the meeting and how do you define success some say it's the fact the wto is meeting such a difficult period in history. >> i wouldn't say that it's been jinxed but it's we've tried to convene and i think that's why i'm so energized. some of the delegation were already there. it was supposed to start last fall and. if there were a lot of conversations, important ones that we need to advance. whether or not we. can get them across the finish line i don't know and if i did know, trade would be a lot less interesting than it is but it is important for us to have and for us to wake up the day after and feel like we have a vision for what we would like it to be. so i will say i am even more energized than i was last fall. we have the office in place and he had been wearing lots of different hats in geneva and has thee knowledge for where the conversations have been. i feel confident about the team they are bringing to this and that we willd make the very best of challenging circumstances and how we position ourselves coming out with a vision to being committed but also knowing that there is an important process that awaits us on the other side. >> i was in geneva the couple of weeks ago and you put together a strong team and i think folks are noticing that which is extremely important. if there is a text out there and some differences have been narrowed. a china and announced it doesn't attend to avail itself. do you see any opening in that announcement if there were indeed thatn could help pave the way for an agreement on the waiver? >> one of the aspects of the trade partner in the some of the forms as the second largest economy in the world this is the relationship that has been very important to us for many years. there is a question around when china speaks, what is it saying and how good is china for the words that it says? quite frankly even the words that it signs up to on paper so i think that i'm also interested in seeing who does china send to geneva and whether they do send someone they do have a capable ambassador i know and respect as litigator but it's more consistentlyst she would like to see the active participation of ministers and has said when you let things go on autopilot not a lot happens and wea are at a point where a things need to stt happening so i would be interested to see how that perceives because it is about its members and what happens will depend on what shows up and what kind of commitment they bring. >> another important member is india and they don't have a great track record in bringing success. when i was in geneva i heard the concerns again that may be india would have blocked some of this work. i know you y have a good relationship with the trade minister. have you been in touch with him in the lead to the ministerial to try to work together to make this a a success? >> last fall as a part of my first tour i went to tokyo and then delhi. we felt it was important to put out a joint statement that was fiveas or six pages is a robust joint statement so we were working very hard on making our trade relationship with india effective and productive. if there was a complex place in the world order to put it diplomatically. what i see is an increasingly strategic india when it comes to trade so i am confident that india. it is a complicated world and the invasion of ukraine has made these that much more complex. but again with all of the trading partners i think that there is a commitment that we will see demonstratedst or not. >> you've mentioned and i'