concern. that's -- how do we keep our economy growing and how do we create the next generation of jobs that america has to be in a position to go out and compete for all of these new consumers that are now coming of age in places like brazil, russia, india, china and south africa and you'll hear the terms "bricks" mentioned a lot and for those of you that maybe don't study trade as much, that's what that is an acronym for, brazil, russia, india, china and south africa. so, one, we sort of understand that a part of --

s. >> the work we do twofold. the first thing is we find new markets and we accomplish that in a big way by working with congress to address outstanding concerns in past trade agreements with korea, panama and colombia, which are going to give us access to $12 billion more in markets, and help us add, we think, at least 70,000 jobs. the agreement with korea will go into force on march 15th.

the meaning of that, once we pass an agreement, then we have to work with them to make sure they can control their loss. the important thing is that 80% of what we sell to korea right now in manufactured goods, the minute that agreement goes into force that's going to go to zero. two-thirds of what we sell to korea in agriculture products, the minute this agreement goes into force the tariffs on those will go to zero. our tariffs are the lowest in the world. we have an inherent belief that by lowering our tariffs and duties we empower cobb assumers and business people. we make it cheaper for you to buy what you want to buy from wherever you want. most other countries tariffs and duties can be anywhere from twice to 100% higher than ours. so if you're a business person selling in korea and you're paying an average tariff of 18% on everything you sell and that

goes from zero on day one, you can understand what that's going to do for you competitiveness. we're also moving to conclude the -- bring the colombia and panama agreement into force. when we do that, we'll have that same advantage there. the other element the president told us to focus on was enforcing our agreements. our sharing with the commissioner that ifortunate to have found someone to put up with me for the last 24 years. i'm a native texan but my wife was raised in detroit. when i went before the senate committee for confirmation one of the senators asked me what did my background as mayor qualify me. i gave two answers. one, a sense of urgency, and two, a bunch of inlaws that are all autoworkers. if you're from texas like commissioner brooks and i, california or hawaii or washington, frankly, when i go

to those states they're telling me, cut the break line. let's trade, trade, trade. i think my having been in detroit and cleveland and cincinnati the last 20 years, i realize not everybody looks at trade through the same prism and a lot of communities are justifiably frustrated about our trade policy. the single biggest complaint i heard is that we don't enforce it. we open up our borders but we're not fighting for america's workers when other countries don't give us the playing field that we deserve. from day one, we've had a very aggressive posture to not only find new markets but president obama insisted that we were going to have the strongest enforcement initiatives of any administration era and we've done that. we brought more cases in the world trade organization. we brought twice as many cases against china as any other administration and we're winning the cases, not to be bullies but to stand up for the fairly basic

principle. trade only works if everybody plays by the rules and i've never met a business large or small, that asks me for special advantage. but what they've all said is, if you give me a chance to compete on level playing field, i'll take my chances. i cannot compete if the deck is stacked against me. so the president is said, we're going to address that and last week, the president announced and created by executive order, an interagency trade enforcement center to make sure that we bring all the agencies and government that have the ability to enforce our trade agreement so we're working as thoughtfully and aggressively as possible and that we aren't wasting money. we're under the same financial pressures that you are. we've been asked to do more with less but we want to make sure we have the ability to do that. i want. >> i want to make sure i have time for you all's questions so if i can i want to do two things. one i'll give you my website. it's ustr.gov and two, i'm

asking for your help. i know many of you serve on either tourism boards which we don't think of all the time. tourism is a huge part of the our trade infrastructure. but for those of you particularly that interface with small businesses, and you think they may benefit from some of what we're doing, i want to give you two websites. the president brought all of government in and said, one of the biggest concerns we've gotten from businesses, we love what we're doing and we love what we hear from commerce and ron kirk. we love what we hear from sba and then i get home and i don't remember who called, where do i start? i'm not ge. i'm a small business. so we launched a new website called business.usa.gov. it's new. the idea is that we want to have a single point of entry, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses whether they want to know about exporting or how to get financed

or how they can get marketing, they can go to that one site and there is an export specific website called export.gov. if you can't remember business.usa go to export.gov if you have questions or comments. and finally, since you're local officials and i understand where you spend a lot of your time, one of the other issues we highlighted with governors and mayors, if we're going to meet the goal we have to address the other elements of the president's initiative and that's infrastructure. we're not going to compete with china and korea and others with ports in many cases, that have not be modernized in years. we have one of the most efficient but one of the most aging rail infrastructures in the world. i've been at ports from tampa to baltimore to washington and houston. all of them are excited but nervous about what's happening in panama because panama's

spending $14 billion to widen the canal and transship goods. the ports, the counties that have the ability to take advantage of that have a huge opportunity to add to their economic base. but collectively, i think we can work to do a better job of helping the american public and congress understand that even in a very challenged economic environment, we cannot short-change our investment in our young people and we have to make sure they have the tools to compete. but we have to invest in our core infrastructure. so that we can continue to grow. i want to stop. i know i've said a lot on thrown a lot at you but i'm thrill thrilled to have a chance to be with naco and i have time for a couple of your questions. if you have follow-up, please feel free to contact me directly. christine is here with me. some of you may remember. christine has been with

secretary tom vilsack but her first love the international affairs so she's going to run intergovernmental relations for us. if you can't get me, feel flee to reach out to christine. so i'll stop and take some questions. >> i see this gentleman. give your name and county. >> foreign trade commissioner for river side county. before coming to you i had to meet with ambassador -- and i have a question they couldn't answer. is the administration going to improve the increase in the h 1 h 2 visa cap with the implementation on march 15th. they ask that i ask you that question without putting you on the spot, but i think that's important if we also look at the foreign direct investment that can come through the h 1 h 2

answ answer. >> rather than gich you a wrong answer, i'll have to get back. congress is very -- if you ever get asked to o'come into the federal government. i have the best job in the federal government. i've been a mayor and secretary of state and one, i only have 250 employees so i don't have to worry about thousands of public employee doing things that get you on youtube every night. but congress retains the authority to enter commercial treatise the and the one thing they say they don't want me making immigration law by policy. we'll engage on the visa issue, which is frankly crippling us right now. many of you are frustrated. we hear from business after business. we go and make these sales and then my customers can't get a visa to come here to learn to how to use the product. there's a difference between some of those visas and the h 1

visa so i want to make sure i don't muck this up. but collectively, this is a place where we need to make the congress to have a common immigration policy and we need to have visa reform as part of that. but for tourism as well. our tourism numbers are up but, again, one of the things constraining it is the difficulty some people are having in getting visas. commissioner brooks? >> ambassador, what progress are we making on the protection of intellectual property when our companies -- china, for instance. >> one of thee spend, probably, a half of our time on, in terms of enforcement of the intellectual property. it's for a practical reason and i've been to detroit. i've been in steel mills. the steel mills and the auto plant today, isn't what people

think it is. these are highly innovative h h hi-tech industries now and as the president has often highlighted america's ability to compete and win in the future is our innovation. we lose that if we don't have protection of our intellectual work product so we work diligently, roy, in a number of forums to make sure we have the strongest intellectual property rights. i mentioned the three trade agreements we passed. we know more than we did at nafta. so we don't pass a trade agreement that doesn't have the highest stab dards of intellectual property rights we can get. so korea, panama and colombia have some of the strongest intellectual property rights you can get. one of the most ambitious we're working on is the transpacific partnership. we're designs what we would like to believe it will be sort of the next-generation trade

agreement and we'll sineek to te it to another level. last year we signed afta, the anti-counterfeiting trade act. when congress passioned the intellectual property rights act in 2007, directed that the administration to do everything we could in our intellectual treaties to make sure we had strong rule of law. we still have countries where they don't do it and in that case we take them to court, if you will, in the world trade organization. one example, you may have read that the presumed next president of china was here two weeks ago. and you may have read about him. he went to iowa where he visited 15 years ago and then he went to california. one of the biggest issues we always press china on is intellectual property rights, enforcement, combatting piracy.

combatting theft of intellectual property. and we won a fairly significant case against china in the wto particularly particularly copywrited and we got them to -- i can go into -- microsoft can tell you that for every computer, for example, sold in the united states, we spend about $285 on software. in most emerging countries, that's about half of that. in china, it's less than ten cents on the dollar. the government itself was operating on about 90% pirated software. one of the things we're doing with china is saying, how about if you buy legal software. we pushed them and they agreed to buy it. we said if you're going to buy agencies -- give your agencies the money to buy it.

we want you to audit it and if you will set the example, hopefully others will begin to do it. but it is a huge issue for us because we lose a lot in terms of piracy and theft around the world. >> i think our ceo wants to speak. >> i comment. we just released a study this week on the infrastructure and -- surveyed about 400 engineers in 39 states and -- [ inaudible ] our figures are in very poor -- [ inaudible ] >> i would say to prove i can be somewhat brief that's not a question, that's an answer. i know people think differently

about the stimulus bill, but stimulus bill worked. now, there's some that argue it didn't work enough that people have to remember, half of the stimulus was for the tax cuts because that's what the republicans wanted. it was was for the tax cuts, because that's what the republicans want. it was the right thing to do. many counties, many communities use that stimulus bill to partner with state and local resources to build roads, to build bridges and ports. we need to do more of it. we have hundreds of thousands of construction workers laid off around the country. it is a common sense thing to do. the president included infrastructure funding in his jobs act. he's asked for it in every bulgt, and we're going to continue to press. we need on a nonpartisan basis governors and mayors and county officials to stand up and say this isn't -- this is how you put america back to work, but it's doing something we

radically need to do. i was home this weekend with a little bit of pride, because we cut the ribbon on a bridge i had on a chance to work on when i was mayor because our highway department said all these bridges are 20 years beyond their useful life. we have to replace them. it took 14, 15 years it to get it. it can't take that long. i think it's a common sense thing to do. hopefully you can join our voices and work with our leaders in congress to do something to just make sense. it will enhance our competitiveness and put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work. >> thank you very much, mr. ambassador. great

made especially for our super tuesday coverage. c-sp c-span.org/screen2. >> there's a real anxiety within a substantial part of black america when confronting black americans who are successful in the wider society because there's this anxiety that to be successful, especially p if you're in a predominantly white setting to get the backing of white people and trust of white people, what did you have to do to get that backing. what did you have to do to get that trust? what did you have to do to get that recognition? there's this fear one of the things you had to do was on to

betray in some form your community. >> the first sunday of every month they focus on the works of one author. this month harvard law professor randall kennedy spoke about race, politics and the obama administration. watch it online at the c-span video library with over a quarter century of american politics and public affairs on your computer. >> senator johnny isakson of georgia is one of a number of lawmakers to speak before the israel public affairs conference held in washington, d.c. we'll watch his remarks until washington today live in about 8 minutes eastern. >> thank you very much. ann davis and her husband jay and steve and melinda worthheem are my dear friends from georgia and members of aipac who did a great job of educating members

of congress about the miracle israel. i had the privilegend s first h miracle that is that great country. i stood on the last israeli outpost overluoling gaza. i saw how close it is to syria and lebanon and what a close neighborhood it is. that's why i believe that any nation like iran, the islamic fundamentalist republic of iran when it declares the destruction of israel, it forfeits any right for any consideration to possess any material that could carry out that goal. last night mish mcconnell made a unilateral statement of where we should be as a congress, republican and democrat. when we have the evidence and the intelligence that iran has the capability, we should declare the necessary legislation to give the president the full authority to

see it that's never exercised and that we take them on because they possess it and they have it or they're developing it. to work with senator boxer from california on a piece of legislation introduced this week. you're going to the hill today, and your job is to carry the message and part of that message is about what we call the enhanced cooperation act of 2012 for the united states and israel. it states fundamentally and clearly and reaffirms our unwavering commitment as a country to the state of israel, our unwavering commitment to see it has the material and military capability to defend itself. our unwavering commitment they get the cooperation from the united states to pursue a two-state settlement as long as the numbeighbors of israel recognize fully israel's right to exist.

as senator levin said earlier, it commits us to a missile defense strategy that ensures iran knows if it makes an attack on israel it will be debilitated by the missile defense system. it makes sure that we expand the strategic stockpile authorization from 200 million to 400 million so israel has united states material on the ground in israel and can get permission to use it by the united states of america as it once in the past has already done. it ensures that we foster more cooperation between nato and israel, to ensure that all the world that loves peace, liberty and freedom and the inalienable rights of the pursuit of happiness work together to secure the security and longevity in this great world of ours. tell that story today when you talk to your congressman and

senator, it's an unekwifl cal statement of the pledge. there should not not a isn't till la of wiggle room between a republican and democrat when it comes to the state of israel and it's security. >> there is a second subject i want you to talk about. it's the 2007 commitment the united states made it to israel for a ten-year $30 billion for the state of israel and the ability to defend itself. they recommended this year in their budget 3.1 billion of athat commitment, and we need to see to it that commitment is met. there are a lot of people who question in difficult times spending american taxpayer money on foreign assistance. when you talk about the state of israel, it's not assistance it's an investment in peace, security

and liberty worldwide. ask yourself this question. how much money would it cost the united states of america if there wasn't an israel to be able to have a presence in the middle east? ten times more than the investment we make in israel. when we went into afghanistan after the attack of 9/11, we had to rent the kirk stan airport to get our planes in. that doesn't put you in a very good position. we need to be sure we have a friend in the middle east that is safe, secure and an ally of the united states and has the military capability to defend itself and our joint interest in that region. now, lastly and equally important, senator graham has introduced a great resolution that definitively declares that

containment it was a policy that works with a rouge nation. you have to prevent iran's nuclear ambition. when you take senator graham's resolution and combine it with a statement made last night by mitch mcconnell, any ayatollah and any president knows there's no wiggle room in america when it comes to iran. there will be no development of, use of, depooh plimt of nis in terms of destruction of the people of israel and the israeli nation. washington lobbying has the bad connotation. you're getting ready to go do it, but it's not lobbying. your telling the story of your heritage and the future of your children and grandchildren. you're telling the story that's the great miracle of israel and what it takes to commit to a commute with