As Delivered
Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you today. I understand there are many of you joining virtually as well from Africa, and I want to give a special welcome to you as well.
Thank you so much Robert Liwak, Oge Onubogu and everyone at the Wilson Center for organizing this incredibly important forum.
When President Biden asked me to serve as his Trade Representative, he gave me a very, very clear directive, and that was to lead U.S. trade policy and to serve the common good. Everything that I have been focused on for the last three and a half years—and also everything that my team has been focused on—has been through this particular lens.
And who we have at the table to advise us, to talk to us, to share with us, and to teach us, has been a key part of how our administration is conducting trade policy.
If we want better results from any of our policies, but in particular our trade policies, we need better inputs. So, since day one, I have been intentionally and strategically inviting more voices to our table. It’s a metaphorical table, so this table can be as big as we want it to be, and we do not run out of seats at the table.
We’ve invited not just those that have been traditionally at the table at USTR, but especially focused on inviting and welcoming in those that have been left out of the process and those that have felt like they’ve been left out of the process.
I just wanted to reflect that it was just yesterday that I sat down for a fireside chat with Dr. Perkins, the president of the International Black Women’s Public Policy Institute. And in our conversation, she put something so well that I want to repeat it here for all of you because I’ve been thinking about it.
And she said, you know, as we look at—her organization is working to empower Black women from the diaspora, across a lot of different public policy areas, to become leaders.
What she said was, it’s really important for us to move outside of the box of tradition, to think outside of the box. And she added, and I think this is a really important point, it’s not because there’s something wrong with our traditions—its actually important to honor our traditions—but it is because there are more than just our traditions.
And at this point in time, given the opportunity that we have with all of the change in the world, it is a particularly special moment for us to be exploring new pathways and new ways of doing things with our most important partners.
So, we know that we cannot have a trade policy that only works for the few. We need to have a trade policy that works for more people across our society.
One of my major goals as the U.S. Trade Representative has been to listen—to learn from your priorities and concerns, so that your voices can truly help to shape our work. This interaction and collaboration have been critical to building out our vision for a durable and an inclusive trade policy.
And that is why this gathering today is so important. That is why it was important for me to be here with all of you.
Let me begin with gratitude. Thank you for all that you do in civil society. I know that our African partners share a vision around more inclusive, sustainable, durable trade policies that inform economic growth, opportunities, industrialization.
It turns out that, in the three and a half years in this job, what I discover every day is, we all the same things. We all want our people to flourish. Not just those at the top, but all of our people, especially our workers and their communities. We all want to build our economies from the middle out and from the bottom up.
And this is why I’m particularly looking forward to kicking off the 21st AGOA Forum, which starts tomorrow.
As President Biden said during the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit that he hosted here in Washington in December of 2022, our administration is all in on Africa. This means partnering with the continent for a more inclusive, resilient, and prosperous future, for as many of us as humanly possible.
And this has to be a partnership, because no one nation, no one organization can do this alone.
This work is a marathon, not a sprint. We’re in this for the long run—to empower our workers, women, our youth, and our Diaspora communities, that human bridge that connects our continents, so that they can thrive and succeed in the challenging global economy.
AGOA has been a key pillar to fully realize this vision for the African continent and for American partnership with the African continent.
And I was incredibly honored to lead the U.S. delegation to last year’s AGOA Forum, which took place just outside Soweto in South Africa.
While I was there, I had the opportunity to visit the Hector Pieterson Museum, two blocks away from where 12-year-old Hector was shot and killed in June 1976 during the Soweto Uprising.
As many of you know this history, this uprising against apartheid was led by Black school children—more than 20,000 of them. Many students were shot and killed, including Hector. But their devotion sparked a continued fight throughout South Africa, for freedom, justice, and equality.
During the closing ceremony in South Africa last year, I reminded my fellow trade ministers and other guests why we cannot be satisfied with the status quo. Why we must continue to build from here, to write the next chapter of our story—which his intertwined with each other—together.
I also implored my colleagues to remember that our work does not exist in a vacuum. We need to remember the real impact that AGOA has on the real lives of real people. The people that we grew up with. The people we went to school with. The people that we work with.
So, the woman entrepreneur who is running a successful macadamia nut processing business and is looking to expand her business. The small business owner making apparel and handicrafts. And the young people, trying to get their start, starting up their businesses with their great, new, young people and hip ideas. And the students and youth, who waiting to make their mark, and who are chomping at the bit for opportunities, and the opportunity to develop and share their talents with the world.
I often say that AGOA is the cornerstone of our economic partnership, and I don’t mean that in the abstract—it has positively touched so many lives. And it has the potential to do so much more.
I want to touch on one aspect of AGOA that is obvious at a convening like this but that we don’t often talk about, which is, in addition to the formal, trade structure preference program of AGOA, another powerful part of AGOA is AGOA’s convening power.
The fact that this forum happens every single year and we trade it off between the United States and one of our partners in sub-Saharan Africa. The ability to convene and to set this table, and to expand this table like we have, especially in these last two years—last year in South Africa, this year in Washington, D.C.—is an incredibly important part of the design of this program and the foundation of our partnership.
Since 2000, the year AGOA was established, AGOA has enabled Africa to realize some of its enormous economic potential, but we know that we can do more. We have the opportunity to improve the program, to deliver better results for workers, others that have been historically overlooked, and for our environment.
All of you here today are important partners in that work, because we need to work together to get this right.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, but you are a powerful and wonderful reminder that trade can and must help craft a fairer and more equitable future for Africa, to show that we can do this for all of us. Empowering workers. Delivering real opportunities across all segments of our societies.
I know that you all believe that we can build this future together. Because of civil society leaders, you are some of the most courageous and committed people that we have in our countries. Your commitment will allow us to accomplish more than we can as individuals.
So, thank you all again for having me today. I look forward to hearing all about your panel discussions. And just as a little bit of a preview, you’re also incredibly privileged to be able to hear from Monde Muyangwa, whom I got to know on a trip to Nairobi to attend, on behalf of the President, the inauguration of Kenya’s President Ruto.
We formed a fast friendship. We discovered so many common values, that it’s not by accident that we both find ourselves in this Administration. Monde, I’m so looking forward to the words that you have to share with us today. Thank you all.
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