hal sirkin is senior partner and managing director at the boston consulting group and an expert in competing globally. les mckeown is the president and ceo of the company predictable success, and also author of the new book "the synergist," how to lead your team to predictable success. and marketing guru jeffrey hayzlett is the head of the leslet group, a business consulting company and author of the new book "running the gauntlet: essential business lessons to lead, drive change and grow profits." great to see all of you. so, hal, do you find a lot of companies reshoring? do you find that you are giving that advice to a lot of companies you work with? >> well, the world has changed pretty rapidly. wages have risen in china by 20% to 30% a year for awhile and companies are beginning to realize that the advantages of going to china, particularly on products that don't have a large labor content, are going down. so we're starting to see just the beginnings of a wave of companies who are beginning to reshore to the u.s. we don't think this will start in a major way until around 2015, but we're

finally, hal sirkin, who kicked off the panel this morning, had a little more time this morning. work that boston consulting group has done to make all of us think harder about this is very helpful. eric, if i could ask you to kick off, what i would like to do is expand trade but at least part of what you addressed -- are there things in your experience that you think we could be doing significantly better across the united states in making it possible for you speedily to make the investments you would like to make here? are there some obstacles, things that seem to you frustrating, costly, and so on, that we ought to know about? >> thank you, secretary bryson. good afternoon. my name is eric spiegel. i am the ceo of siemens in the u.s., one of the world's largest engineering and technology companies. we operate in 190 companies, well over $100 billion in sales. the u.s. is our largest market, with sales in the $25 billion. 65,000 employees here, 130 manufacturing facilities. if you go back in time, siemens has been in the u.s. over 100 years, and we've always manufactured and do

and this man, hal sirkin, an expert on insourcing, on stage with the president, saying that will bolsterate it, to speed it up even a year, will have a major impact on jobs in the u.s. that's a great thing for the country. >> reporter: but critics say the president knows his tax changes are unlikely to pass congress. >> today's meeting was more political than economic. he expects to run against romney. romney's going to make trade with china a big issue. and he wants to show he's taking action. >> reporter: the bottom line, the vacuum is turning around with or without all the fuss at the white house. dan harris, abc news, new york. >> there has been an encouraging trend with the unemployment rate and weekly claims on unemployment will be released later this morning by the labor department. >> numbers have been good recently. hopefully the trend continues. we'll see. >>> shifting gears now. two north carolina counties are littered with debris this morning after getting slammed by a rare january tornado. the twister destroyed a number of homes there, leaving residents trapped in the rubble