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bob we open up our borders but we not art -- are not fighting for america's workers when we are not given the playing field we deserve. we have had an aggressive posture to not only find new markets but president obama insisted we will have the strongest enforcement of any administration and we have a gun that. we brought more cases to the world trade organization, and twice as many against china, and we are winning this case is not to be bullied by to stand up for a principle that trade on

the works for everybody plays by the rules. i have never met a business to that asked me for an advantage. they have all said if you give me a chance to compete, i will take my chances. the president has said we're going to address that. last week he announced an agency trade enforcement center to make sure that we bring all of the agencies and government that have the ability to enforce our trade agreement -- agreements so we are working as aggressively as possible and that we are not wasting money. we are in the same financial pressure you are. we have been asked to do more with less but we want to make sure we have the ability to do that. i want to make time of your questions -- for your questions. i am going to ask for your help. many of you served on the

tourism board, which we do not think of all the time. tourism is a huge part of our infrastructure. for those of you who are faced -- interface with a small businesses and think they may benefit, i want to give you a couple of websites. the president and said that one of the biggest concerns we have from businesses, we love what we are doing. we love what we hear from commerce. we love what we hear from -- where do i start? i am not general electric. i am a small business. we have a new business. it is new. the ideas we want to have a single point of entry, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses where they want to know about exporting or financing or getting marketing. they can go to that site and

there is an export-specific web site. if you cannot remember business scott u.s.a., co to that website. finally, since you are local officials and you spend a lot of your time, when of the other issues we have highlighted, if we're going to meet this goal, we have to address those elements of the president cosell initiative. that is infrastructure. and we're not going to compete with china and others with courts that have not been modernized. we have one of the most aging rail infrastructure is in the world. i have been from tampa to baltimore to washington, all of them are excited but nervous about what is happening in panama because it has -- it is

spending $14 billion so they can widen bacchanal. the counties that have the ability to take advantage have an opportunity to add to their economic base but collectively we can work to do a better job of helping the american public and congress understand that even in a challenge to environment, we cannot shortchange our investment in aryan people and we have to make sure they have the tools to compete. we have to invest in infrastructure so we can continue to grow. i want to stop. i know i am set a lot. i am thrilled i have a chance to be with you. and i have had time for a couple of your questions and. if you have follow up, feel free to contact me directly. some of you may remember her. she has been working on issues. her first love is international

affairs. she is going to run intergovernmental relations. so free to reach out to her. i will stop and we will -- >> would you like to take a couple of questions? give your name and county. >> good afternoon. [unintelligible] will be administration implement march 15? i am putting you on the spot but i think it is important we look at it. >> rather than give you a wrong answer, i will take your

information and get back to you. i know we have addressed some issues but congress is very prescriptive about my work. if any of you get asked to come into the government, i have the best job in the federal government. i have been a mayor, i only have 250 employees. i do not have to worry about than doing things that get you one youtube. congress retains the authority to trees. they tell me they do not want me making immigration law by trade policies. we will engage on that issue which is crippling us right now. i know many of you are frustrated. we hear from businesses. we make these sales and my customers cannot get a visa to come here and use the product. there is a difference between some of those. i want to make sure i do not mark this up.

this is a place where we need to tell the congress we are past due to having a common-sense policy. and we need to have a vis a reform as part of that. for tourism as well. tourism numbers are up. one of the things a constraining it is the difficulty people are having in getting a visa,. . >> what progress are we making on the protection of intellectual property when companies jade -- trade with china? >> one of the areas that we spend probably half of our time on in terms of enforcement is in telex or property. i have been to detroit, i have been in the steel mills. the auto plant today is not what people think it is.

these are highly innovative industries and as the president has highlighted, america's ability to compete is going to because of our innovation. we lose that if we do not have protection of our work product. we worked diligently in a number of places to make sure we have the strongest rights. i mentioned the three trade agreements, we know more now than we did. we do not pass a trade agreement that does not have the highest standards of rights we can get. they have some of the strongest rights you can get. one of the most ambitious initiatives we are working on this something called the trans- pacific partnership. we are working with nine other economies to design what we would like to believe will be the next-generation trade agreement. we're going to seek to take that

to another level. last year we signed something , i think the intellectual property rights in 2007 directed the administration to do everything we could to make sure that we have strong rule of law. you still have some countries that do not do it. in that case, we take them to court in the world trade organization. one example is, you may have read that the presumed next president of china was here two weeks ago. as you may have read, he went to iowa where he visited 15 years ago when he went to california. one of the issues we press china on is intellectual property rights, enforcement, piracy, combating theft of intellectual

property. we want a case against china in the wto for pirated goods and in the middle of that trip we were able to get them to agree to comply with the adaptation of it. i can go into -- microsoft can tell you that for every computer sold in the united states, we spend too entered $85 on software. -- 428$285 on software. in china, the government operates on software. how about you buying legal software? we push to them and they have agreed to buy a. we say we -- you have to give your agency's the money to buy it. if you will set the example,

hopefully others will begin to do it. it is an issue for us. we lose a lot in terms of piracy and theft around the world. >> i think our ceo -- >> we just released a study this week, a survey of about 400 public service workers. [inaudible] can you tie that together with what you're doing? >> i can be somewhat brief. that is an answer, not a question. i know people think differently about the stimulus bill. it worked.

some have argued that half of the stimulus was for the tax cuts. that is what the republicans wanted. it was the right thing to do. many communities use that a bill to partner with the state and local resources 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 funding in his jobs act. we are going to continue to press and we need, on may non- artists -- partisan basis, officials to stand up and say, this is how you not only put america back to work but it is doing something that we need to do. i was home this weekend, with a little bit of pride, we cut the ribbon on a bridge i had the

chance to work on when i was mayor. the department said all of these bridges are 20 years beyond their useful life. we have to replace them. it took us 14 years. you cannot take that long. i think it is a common-sense thing to do. hopefully you can work with our leaders to do something that makes sense and to enhance our competitiveness and put hundreds of thousands of constructors -- construction workers back to work. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> president obama spoke to his advisory board at a business roundtable chaired by the boeing president.

>> thank you. [applause] thank you very much, everybody. it is good to see all of you. jim, thank you for the introduction. it is a privilege to be with the men and women of the business roundtable. over the past three years, we've worked together on a number of issues, and we've found common ground on an awful lot of them. some of you have dedicated your time and energy and expertise to serving on my jobs council or my export council. others have hosted me or cabinet members at your companies, at your plants, at your distribution centers. and this engagement has been incredibly productive for us. it's helped to shape our collective work and to get this economy growing again. so i just wanted to say thank you for that. tonight, i want to keep that engagement going, so i'm going to keep my remarks at the top relatively brief. i'm looking forward to hearing about your new "taking action for america" report.

and i'm going to hopefully spend as much time listening as i do talking. but the last time i addressed this group was just over two years ago, when we were still working to clear away the wreckage from what turned out to be the worst economic crisis that we've seen since the great depression. and obviously we've got a long way to go. we've still got millions of people who are out of work. we still have a lot of folks whose homes are underwater. there are enormous economic challenges that lie ahead, and we're going to have to think strategically and systematically about how we restore a sense of middle-class security for americans who are doing the right thing, working hard, looking to support their families. the good news is, over the last two years, businesses like yours have created over 3.7 million new jobs. the american auto industry has come back. companies are bringing jobs back to america. manufacturers are adding new jobs for the first time since

the 1990s. and i've seen it firsthand in many of your companies. most recently, i went to the boeing plant, out in washington state. and jim informed me that last year, orders for commercial aircraft rose by more than 50%, and they had to hire 13,000 workers all across america just to keep up. and i have to say that given the number of planes that i've been selling around the world, i expect a gold watch upon my retirement. [laughter] so the economy is getting stronger, and the recovery is speeding up. and the question now is, how do we make sure that it keeps going? i've been talking a lot recently about how we can do that -- how we can help companies like yours hire more workers, bring more jobs back to america, how we can leave an economy that's not just restored to pre-crisis levels, but positions ourselves to be competitive in this 21st century economy over the long term - an economy built to last. i think we have to focus on our core strengths -- american

manufacturing, american energy, american innovation, the best skills and education for american workers. right now, on the manufacturing front, i think we've got a huge opportunity. what's happened in the auto industry can happen in other areas, and we've got to make sure that we understand even though manufacturing will not be the same percentage of our economy as it once was, it still remains this incredible multiplier for services and consumers and prosperity all across america. that's why i want to thank andrew liveris -- where's andrew? there he is. andrew is helping us to do some terrific work as part of our advanced manufacturing partnership. and obviously part of our job as the federal government is to make sure that the r&d, the basic research is continuing to be done, and figuring out how we commercialize that, create

products here in america, and sell them all around the world is going to be absolutely critical. thanks to new bipartisan trade agreements that i've signed with panama, colombia, and, most significantly, south korea, we're on track to meet our goal of doubling american exports over the next five years. and i know the brt was very helpful in making sure that that happened. i think i've shown that i will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for american goods. that's why we worked so hard to secure russia's invitation into the wto. that's why i have asked congress to repeal jackson-vanik, to make sure that all your companies and american companies all across the country can take advantage of it. and that's something that we're going to need some help on. this is about creating a level, rules-based playing field in the growing russian market. because when it comes to competing for the jobs and the industries of tomorrow, no foreign company should have an advantage over american companies. when the playing field is level, american companies will win,

american workers will win, and this country will win. and one of the most important things congress can do right now for companies like yours, to sell your ideas and your products and your services around the world, is to reauthorize the export-import bank at the appropriate funding level. this is something that we're going to be focused on in the coming weeks and months. during the financial crisis, trade finance dried up all around the world, and the ex-im bank lived up to its mission -- it stepped up to fill the void at record levels, and at no cost to taxpayers. in fact, since 2005, ex-im has returned billions back to the u.s. treasury. so this is a smart thing to do for american businesses and american jobs. it is an indispensable resource for our exporters, especially since many of your competitors are getting aggressive financing from their governments. so i'm asking your help in making sure congress does the right thing on this front.

i've also shown that i won't stand by when our competitors don't play by the rules. a lot of you are expanding into growth markets, in emerging markets in asia pacific region. but many of you, at least privately, have indicated to me that it gets harder and harder to do business there in terms of protecting your intellectual property, competing against indigenous innovation laws. and so what we are doing is setting up a trade enforcement unit to aggressively investigate and counter unfair trade practices all around the world, including in countries like china. and if you're a ceo that's willing to bring jobs back to america, we want to do everything we can to help you succeed. that means working together to reform our tax system so that we are rewarding companies that are investing here in the united states, making sure that we are able to cut our tax rate here but also broaden the base. that is going to be a difficult task. anybody who has been involved

in tax discussions in any legislature, but especially congress, knows that it's like pulling teeth. but it is the right thing to do for us to become more competitive. we're also going to have to make significant investments in american energy. i am very proud of the fact that american energy output is reaching record levels. we are seeing the highest oil production in the last eight years. at the same time, because so many of your companies have become more efficient, we're actually seeing a reduction in imports -- in fact, below 50 percent for the first time back in 2010, the first time in a decade. but we've got more work to do, and it's going to require an all-of-the-above strategy. obviously, folks are getting killed right now with gas prices. and that has an impact on all of your companies, because

consumers are more price sensitive when it comes to filling up their gas tank than just about anything else. that means, yes, we've got to produce more oil and more natural gas, and we are game for that. it also means, though, we've got to invest in the energy sources of the future. we've got to invest in clean energy. we've got to invest in efficiency. we've got to make sure that the advanced batteries for electric cars, for example, are manufactured here in the united states. and then the final thing we're going to have to do is make sure that we have the skills and the training for our workers that are unmatched around the world. there has been a lot of talk about education reform, we've actually implemented education reform. and we've been able to get more than 40 states to raise standards, to start looking at best practices to figure out how we can train teachers more effectively, make sure that teachers who aren't doing a good job are getting the kind of training they need or they're not in the classroom, but also rewarding those folks who are stepping up to the plate and making sure our kids are prepared.

it also means matching up companies with our community colleges to train people for the jobs that actually exist. and i know that companies like siemens and ups are doing a great job on this front. we want to continue to push that forward. two last points -- one is, i will not give up on the need for us to rebuild america's infrastructure. when you think about your own businesses, if you know that you've got to make some capital investments and interest rates are historically low and it is a buyer's market, you act, understanding that you've got to project five years out, 10 years out, 20 years out. well, that's the situation our country faces. i make no apologies for being chauvinistic when it comes to wanting to have the best airports, the best roads, the fastest broadband lines, the best wireless connections here in the united states of america. and now is the time for us to

do it, and we're going to need brt's help. that will be good for business. it will allow you to move goods and services more quickly around the world. it will put people back to work. it will be a boost for our economy. and it will increase our productivity and efficiency over the long term. and the final thing i just want to make mention of is the issue of how we pay for all these things. there obviously, over the last couple of years, has been an enormous debate about deficits and debt -- and i'm sure we'll have a chance to talk about that more during the q&a. the fact of the matter is that we have already made significant cuts when it comes to discretionary spending. we are pruning this government to make sure the programs that don't work we eliminate, so that we can invest in the programs that are necessary for our growth. we're going to have to make some continued reforms when it comes to, particularly, our health care system, because it is still too expensive and we've got an aging population that we're going to have to take care of.