Because our Doorknock trip is only four days long and there are so many individuals and groups that we want to meet with, our days in Washington are extremely busy, with delegates (and staff) very tired by the end of the day.
Delegates started out with a 7:45am breakfast meeting before heading off in teams to our various meetings. I joined the group going to the Department of Commerce to meet with the Acting Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, Rochelle Lipsitz. We expressed our thanks to her for the Commercial Service’s efforts to expand export opportunities for U.S. companies. We also told her that we would be advocating for additional resources for the USCS in our meetings on the Hill.
We then headed to the House side of the Capitol to meet with Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), co-Chair of the U.S. China Working Group. This followed yesterday’s meeting with Rick Larsen (D-WA), Kirk’s co-Chair in the Working Group. Kirk and his staff updated us on the status of the Working Group’s competitiveness agenda and thanked us for our efforts to gain co-sponsors to the U.S.-China Market Engagement and Export Promotion Act, which has growing support and thirteen co-sponsors as of today.
Further briefings and meetings with members of Congress and the Administration. In all, the delegation had nineteen different meetings today and now we’re all off to dinner to take a breather and prepare for an evening busier day tomorrow.
On another note, members of the delegation shared their on-the-ground perspective as part of an event organized by the East West Center. A wide range of attendees from the business, academic, public policy worlds as well as from government were in attendance. It was a great opportunity for us to share out message about U.S. competitiveness and the importance of the U.S.-China commercial relationship.
Delegates John Grobowski, Tom McCawley, and Steven Tseng met with Congress’ only Chinese-American legislator, Representative David Wu. Rep. Wu represents Oregon’s 1st District, which includes the City of Portland. Rep. Wu was born in Taiwan and offers a unique perspective on U.S.-China relations and spoke passionately about the need to engage China on business and non-business issues alike. As a member of the House Committee on Science & Technology, Rep. Wu is a leading proponent of U.S.-China Human space flight cooperation. Cost savings and bridge building were given as reasons for the two countries to work together. While not on AmCham’s list of top three priorities, we couldn’t agree more that increased collaboration in science and technology between the U.S. and China should be a priority.