 I think we're going to get started. This is great. Thanks, everybody, for coming. What a nice crowd. We're here today to talk about the trade and development nexus, and we have a very interesting group assembled. This is part of the US Leadership and Development Project here at CSIS. I'm Dan Rondi. I'm co-leading the US Leadership and Development Project with my colleague, Joanna Nesseth, who's in the back there, waving. And then we're doing this in partnership with Chevron. I don't know if my friend Mamadou is here or not. Is Mamadou Bay or someone else from Chevron here? They always said Mamadou will be here shortly, I suspect. And it's a new three to five-year initiative that we've launched with. There's information about it outside. But one of the areas that we're focusing on is the role of the private sector in development. And so we've had a series of discussions with folks from OPIC and from USTDA. And today we're very honored to have Assistant Secretary Fernandez from the US Department of State here, who's going to be leading a discussion. And we have a number of other participants with me, along with Bill Lane, who's Director of Government Affairs here in Washington for Caterpillar. But it's also a real pleasure to have my colleague, Meredith Broadbent, who's the shoal chair for trade here as well and who's going to make some introductory remarks to frame up the conversation. But I'm going to stop there. I'm going to ask my friend and colleague Meredith just to make a few framing remarks about the trade and development nexus. Thanks, Dan. I really wanted to welcome Bill and Assistant Secretary Fernandez today. It's going to be, it's an exciting time for trade. And I was further excited to see in Wikipedia, Secretary Fernandez's bio that says he's a lifelong supporter of commercial engagement. And so I say that with some trepidation for winning Wikipedia. But since you're here to correct the record if it's not true, I feel safe in saying that. And I think it is true. What have we come to, Wikipedia? By way of introduction, I just wanted to sort of, as we launch our Chevron program here on the role of trade, the trade aspects of development. Our general orientation is that we see that trade agreements and the expansion of commercial relations through private sector investment in developing countries are a major contributor to economic development. And they're an effective means to project the rule of law and US influence around the globe. In addition, trade agreements can be a strong tool in the president's foreign policy toolkit, but only if you can get on the same page with Congress. And I think there's good news on that front. After a few very quiet years, there's been some sort of a terribly exciting time for the trade types in this audience. And you know who you are because it's a special world, and we start talking about non-markups of trade agreements. And the Congress and the administration actively getting the details down on the legislative language that we'll take to implement these agreements. We're making huge progress. And I'm confident that we're going to get there. And it's going to be very important for the United States that we'll be able to speak with a single voice on our posture towards these very important agreements. The role of trade in development is something that we want to investigate further. And we'll be working with many of you in the audience to sort of bring to bear some of the new ideas that are out there. But the FTAs that are under active consideration in Congress are valuable market access agreements. They pry open foreign markets for US exporters and farmers and service providers. But they also promote the development purpose of aiding the establishment of environments that are welcoming to business and to private sector initiatives because they're characterized by more due process and governmental transparency. USTR in the past has pointed out that countries that open highly regulated sectors like telecommunications and financial services under trade agreements grow 1.5 percentage points faster than countries where these markets in those countries are closed and non-transparent. And all three of these free trade agreements have robust investment chapters that set up strong rule of law disciplines and access to dispute settlement and those protections. So as we move into an interesting conversation here between the administration setting the policy and how the private sector is going to play in that role, I'm looking forward to the comments that we'll have on these trade agreements, the issues of capacity building, what maybe some of our experience on the path that has shown us the Central American Free Trade Agreement. And what we see coming forward is US policy toward the Arab countries, the Arab spring countries that are undergoing so much change right now. So I really look forward to today's panel. Thanks. Thanks, Meredith. Maybe we could start with a question about the trade and development nexus. I think Meredith did a great job of framing up what the benefits are. But maybe Assistant Secretary Fernandez, maybe you could start just from your perspective. Obviously, you've done a lot of thinking about this. And also, both your work in the private sector and also your work in public service is really at that sweet spot. And then I'm hoping Bill will also comment on that. Thank you, Dan. And it's good to see Bill. And thank you, Meredith, for those words. One of the things that brought me into government was what I saw as an opportunity to really take that sweet spot that you mentioned, Dan, of business and development. And really, OK. Is it on? Can you hear me now? Yep. OK. Yep. Thank you. The sweet spot of business and development. Anyway, in our bureau, economics, energy, and business, one of the things that we always talk about, and it's really one of the things that brought me into government was to be able to mine that convergence of business and development. Business is not always an angel. I know that from having worked for 30 years as a lawyer in New York. But there are spots where if you do it right, you can both make money and you can also help develop. And I'm looking at, for example, some of the initiatives that we've taken on that we talk about all the time in our bureau, agriculture. You have US agricultural companies that are able to have the technology today to be able to grow more food in places like Africa and do it in a sustainable way. And at the same time, do good for their shareholders. And so that sweet spot of business and development is something that I think we have overlooked too often. And I think it's something good that I and people in my bureau and government in general, certainly, Secretary Clinton has spoken about it. It's something that we're intending to really drive. Bill, you're on the US Global Leadership Campaign's board. You've been on the Sid Washington board. Thank you for that. Can you talk about, there's an obvious reason why as director of government affairs for Caterpillar, you've been so involved in development issues. And could you talk about the trade and development nexus? Yeah, if I could, and especially if the students are in the audience, you couldn't pick a better month to come to Washington because it's really cool this month and it's very uncomfortable. But I mean, this is actually a month that we could really see a pivot point that could move the direction on a wide range of issues, hopefully in the right direction. I've been with Caterpillar for 36 years, a long time. And I have to say, in some ways, we haven't changed. In some ways, we have. I mean, we've always been focused on exports and on overseas markets. But if you go back long enough, you would hear an expression from a lot of our executives, which would be something like, we believe in trade, not aid. Well, we probably believe in trade more now than we ever have in our whole corporate history. But we also realize that for some problems, dealing with disease, clean water, things of that sort, that unless you hit a certain hygiene level, trade's not going to make a big difference. So you really do have to address the AIDS epidemic in Africa or Latin America or Asia. You really do have to go after governance issues we're trying to do with the MCC and what have you. So I mean, there's a threshold there. And I think this isn't just unique to Caterpillar. I think corporate America gets it. And as a result of the US Global Leadership Coalition, we've got a couple hundred companies that play a big role to try to make sure that the international affairs budget is adequately funded. And we've seen pretty good growth in that budget over the last 10 years. Secondly, over half of what we make in the United States at Caterpillar, we export. And we've always been big exporters. But in the last four years, something else has changed. Over half of what we export now, we export to non-OECD countries. So this notion that there's a great promise in the developing world, the promise isn't there anymore. It's a reality. And if you're not part of it, you're really missing out an opportunity. One of the initiatives I'm trying to champion up at Penn State is young people love to go overseas. We like to go overseas when we were students. And we always went to countries that were really hardship assignments like in Italy or in France and things like that. And the students still like to have those type of hardship experiences. The question is how do you get folks to go to other countries that really are not quite as exotic or glamorous? And that's a challenge. And that's what we're trying to promote. So the point being, there's a lot of ways you can address this. And we're gonna talk about bilateral agreements. We're gonna talk about regional agreements. But more than anything else, there has to be a change in focus. And that change in focus has to be one, dealing with engagement, dealing with embracing the future and trying to hide from the future. The American companies that have done the best job, and this is a bit of an advertisement. I think Caterpillar falls in those ranks are the ones that have seen the future as an opportunity and we haven't tried to hide from it. So whether it's proposed sanctions against China or whether it's protectionist initiatives dealing with rapidly growing countries like in India and in Latin America, countries or companies and peoples that have focused on opportunities have had the most success. Those that have tried to hide or buy time or manage decline are the ones where you've really seen a downward spiral. Bill, let me start with you and I wanna bring in Assistant Secretary Fernandez and also Meredith might comment on this as well about, we've talked a lot about Columbia and Panama. We were talking about this earlier. Could you just talk a little bit about how you say, how plan Columbia sort of teed up the agreement that we currently have with Columbia? Well, everybody loves to talk about failure. And we like to talk about how partisan this town is. And there's lots of failure out there and there's a lot of partisanship. But I have to tell you, as far as I'm concerned, plan Columbia may be the best counterinsurgency program this country's ever embarked on. Now think about this, if you go back 12, 14 years, Columbia was on the verge of being a failed state. There was all sorts of, between paramilitary and the FARC and the narco traffickers and what have you, the government was losing battalion size battles in a very important country. The US, by embracing smart power, and this was President Clinton teaming up with Speaker Hastert. They started up a program, Plan Columbia, which was really a effort to embrace both improving the hard power aspects of foreign policy but also the civil society aspects. They did it for a sustained period of time. It was never an inexpensive endeavor. It was never a perfect endeavor. But when you look at the cost of the entire 12 year period, it's about equal to three weeks in Afghanistan. And today we have a thriving democracy, like all democracies it's not perfect, but it's made a difference. Today, wherever you go people talk about we need to do a better job embracing smart power. Well this is a place where we really did do smart power. And now hopefully in the next few weeks we're gonna cement those gains with a free trade agreement. So what do we get out of the free trade agreement? For those of you who need to regulate your fatigue, we have a guaranteed access to good coffee for as long as the eye can see. For those of you who sometimes miss important dates, you have an ample supply of flowers. And for those of you who thought your mother loved your sister more than you, you can always give her flowers at Mother's Day at a very reasonable cost. Not only that, people don't realize how important the Latin markets are. Some of the biggest coal mines in the world are in Columbia. So one of Caterpillar's 10 largest export markets. Peru that a free trade agreement went into effect two years ago, we saw our exports to Peru go up 60%. And one of my favorite trade agreements that I've ever worked on was on Chile. And what we saw with Chile was US exports to Chile went up three fold and US imports from Chile went up three fold. But what did we get? We got fresh grapes in the winter which made us all a little healthier. And we got crushed grapes year round which made us all a little happier. So the trade notion doesn't solve everything but I have to say one thing, it does make life better by both those who export and those who import. And if I had one slight criticism of some of our current leaders, we're now talking about trade but only in an export context. We need to talk about trade both ways because we benefit for the really young people in here, the Pokeman card that you receive, was that more valuable than the one you traded? And trade is important and we benefit both from the export side of things but also from the import side. Assistant Secretary Fernandez, playing Columbia, the Columbia and Panama free trade agreements, the opportunity. Well look, in Latin America, not just in Columbia, the real challenge going forward is to have growth with social inclusion. How do you do that? Well, you help to create a middle class, you try and promote the rule of law, you try and get people opportunities that weren't there before. That's what trade does. And in a place like Columbia, the free trade agreement will enable Columbia and exporters to continue exporting here. But more importantly from our side, and I take what Bill said in terms of the criticism of the current leadership in government. But in terms of our exports, we have to realize that most, if not all of Columbia's exports today come into this country duty free. And yet our exports into Columbia pay an average of seven to 15% in custom duties. Some of them pay as much as 260%. So yes, you'll be able to get flowers to give your loved ones at some point of the year. But at the same time, we will be able to export automobiles, we'll be able to export agricultural products, Caterpillar will be able to export its equipment without a customs duty. And in doing so, we'll be able to compete with countries in the Mercosur region that will not pay any with the European Union and with others that have signed agreements with Columbia. So what we have to realize is we will help and it's a good combination of business and development. It will help our exports, we'll be able to continue exporting into what is today the third largest market of in Latin America for the US. But at the same time, we'll be able to promote growth and we'll be able to promote stability and we'll be able to solidify the changes that have been brought about by Plan Columbia. Plan Columbia has gone through its first stage and that first stage was an economic, sorry, it was a military stage. But at this point, the challenge is to solidify that and to do that in a way that's sustainable. And the only way you're gonna be able to do that is with trade, with growth, and with social inclusion. Great. Okay, well, let me ask you, we were talking about earlier as well in the green room about the Arab Spring and you gave some remarks at the Egypt Forward Conference that I thought was a great conference that USTDA put on last week. On less than two months' notice, had 1,000 people, any number of different ministers from the traditional governments in Egypt had the whole Obama administration, you guys were there in force. It was really a great success on the part of TDA and I think a great success for the Obama administration. You gave some remarks there and you've also given some remarks recently. You were in Tunisia, so you've been thinking about and working on the issues of how to consolidate the gains of the Arab Spring. Could you talk a little bit about what needs to happen there? Sure. Well, I mean, that was a great conference and by the way, USTDA, if there's an agency where you get the bank for your buck, that's a great little agency and it does a fabulous job. We have been at the State Department in our bureau, we've been working in North Africa really for the last six to nine months before the beginning of the Arab Spring. My first trip to the region was back in November and the reason we did that is that you could see that there was a problem brewing. You had demographic bulge, you had 30 to 40% of the population between 18 to 25 years of age. The unemployment rates were high and the more educated that you were as a young person, the harder it was to get a job. That was a recipe for a disaster. That was a recipe for unrest. What we've been trying to do since then, basically again since the end of last year, was to look for ways where we could work with governments to help create jobs and to do so by using the private sector by trying to create small and medium enterprises by bringing entrepreneurs into the region, by bringing US investors into the region, by talking about what the private sector could do in North Africa and in Egypt and to do so in a way we could both benefit where our businesses could export and could invest in these places and at the same time having their private sector also have better links with the private sector in the US. Great. If you could talk about the Doha round, I want to ship to the Doha round. We've had a discussion about this, Bill. Maybe I'll ask you to lead off and then maybe, Meredith, you might comment on the Doha round as well and then we'll let Assistant Secretary Fernandez comment. Bill, we're at sort of an interesting place in the Doha round. Maybe you could just comment on, maybe this was supposed to be the development round. You know, you're always trying to find the right cliche, if you have a cliche generator and one of them is it's always darkest before the dawn and the only thing I can say it's been a very long night and we're hoping that's true but so far we're still in that dark period. Historically, we've had these rounds, if you will, through the multilateral negotiations and the last one was the Urgway round which was completed in 1995. Very comprehensive. It was probably the most ambitious of any of the rounds. I think there was about nine of them going back. This was sort of the unwinding of the protectionism of the 30s that took place and it was part of the Brenton Woods reforms and what had it and it's worked. It's reduced trade barriers pretty remarkably and after 9-11 we launched the Doha round and the goal was to focus primarily on developing countries but of course you're always using this as a way to reduce trade barriers overall. We've got a 10th year anniversary coming up and there's always positioning that takes place but you have whether they're companies or whether they're NGOs or whether they're governments, everybody has their own strategy that they're involved with. From a caterpillar point of view, I mean this could be the mother load of free trade for caterpillar. As part of the Urgway round, developed countries eliminated their tariffs on the machines that we make. So if you buy a caterpillar bulldozer in the United States or Europe or Japan, there's no tariff on it right now but there's still pretty sizable tariffs in a lot of the developing world and as part of the last proposal by the Europeans, they said for these 10 sectors of the economy that agreed to zero tariffs in developed countries, let's make that for everybody and so that included machinery or agricultural machinery and medical equipment and paper and wood products, beer, had beer, you imagine that would come right to the top of the list. Distilled spirits was in the list but anyway, there's pharmaceuticals was another one. So there's some strong commercial benefits but good for consumers as well. But it's really not got a whole lot of traction. Nobody's really embraced that concept so far. And then you've got sort of, okay, let's just focus on what helps developing countries. So there's talk about a plan B and that deals with capacity building, essentially removing trade barriers that are sort of manmade in the sense of bad customs, regimes and what have you. Or duty-free quota-free, in other words, for the LDC countries, for the poorest of the poorest countries, let's get rid of all tariffs and quotas which would be very, very positive particularly for the Cambodias of the worlds and the Bangladesh, just a factoid if you will. The US gives Bangladesh about 70 million dollars a year in aid and we collect about 600 million dollars a year in revenue in the way of tariffs because they produce the products that have the highest tariffs on them, clothes and shoes. So this would be an opportunity to really help those LDC countries and that really hasn't gotten much traction which really raises the question. And here I want to criticize business. I want to criticize the NGO community and I want to criticize governments. It's been 10 years but you don't hear business in a big energetic way saying we need a robust round and we need to get this done. And when I say business, I'm not just talking about US business, I'm talking about business around the world. Very, you know, this is an opportunity to really generate economic growth over the next 10, 20 years. And so far that's an opportunity we haven't focused on. NGO community, the goal is to help development. And if the goal is to help development, everyone should be embracing a world with duty-free, quota-free access for the poorest of the poor countries. I mean, you know, it's hard enough being poor. You know, you don't have to really pile on with high taxes. So I mean, you know, the NGO community needs to play a bigger role. And as far as governments are concerned, you know, there's nothing exciting talking about multilateral agreements. But we all know if you do it right, you really can generate positive benefits, not just on a regional or bilateral basis, but you can do it on a global basis. And we really need the governments. We don't have folks talking like they did when we had the Bretton Woods talks. We don't have some of the leaders on both sides of the party that will really address these issues. I remember during the Uruguay round, Senator Moynihan in a talk show that was dealing with some scandal at the time stopped the talk show for seven minutes to give a boring rendition about the cat. And I'm sure the ratings dropped, but it was an important thing to do. We need to have some leaders that are willing to bore people to death and force them to do the right thing. Merida? Yeah, you know, I think that's a great summary of a lot of the options and possibilities that are available in the Doha round. I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of great groundwork that's been laid, but it's not coming to fruition in the short term. I think all of us will continue to work on it. And there was, I think, a different viewpoint on really what energized development. And part of the United States' view on that was that opening up trade, reducing all of our high tariffs for developing countries, ought to be reciprocated a bit by some market openings in advanced developing countries. And you have a lot of countries that are benefiting a lot from the trading system. The WTO is guarding their imports through rules of nondiscrimination and fair treatment in their export markets. And still, it was very hard to measure what some of the advanced developing countries were really willing to contribute in terms of market opening. And I think the last I heard on even on their applied tariffs, they weren't willing to bind the tariffs that they were collecting. They wanted to only commit to opening at a much higher level that's not even really relevant to the real world trade. So I would be interested to hear what the Assistant Secretary has to say about development and the Doha round and what we might be able to achieve in the future. So Assistant Secretary Fnatic, are you going to divorce to death? Yeah, that I can do easily on any subject. But I was hoping to just sort of be ignored for a while on this one. Look, I think both of you have laid out the problem. I think we all have a right to be concerned about the state of the Doha round. We are not ready to throw in the towel. We have a number of colleagues who are spending all of their time and effort trying to see if there's any way that we can bring it to fruition. The fundamental question and the thing that divides all sites at this point is what kinds of contributions are you going to ask from the advanced emerging countries, from the China's of the world, Brazil, India. The current state of negotiations would have 97% of India's industrial goods be shielded from competition. We don't think that's an appropriate result. There's no movement, as far as we can tell, on services. So I think there's a lot of negotiations to be done. We are, but we're still at the table. And we are going to remain at the table until the last possible minute, because we think that ultimately there's a deal that ought to be done and that I think we would all benefit from. But what's on the table now is just not acceptable. OK, we're going to open it up for questions. We've got some microphones. So I'm looking for, I'll call on hands. People have questions for Assistant Secretary Fernandez or the other folks up here. OK, well, we're going to bunch a couple of them. So if you can identify yourself, your name, and also if you can put place it in the form of a question. Thank you very much, Rao-Ghubigweil. I cover the State Department also from India, globe, and Asia today. My question is, recently US and India had a largest economic and financial agreement, or whether it's a dialogue at the Treasury Department. So where do we stand now as far as India, US economic relations and trade relations are concerned? Because now India is seeking second green revolution also from the United States. And also finally, some equipments also, they are seeking security and also economic development. Other questions? Let me bunch these together. Other questions that we can take? The woman in the back, I think this one, yep. Assuming that the free trade agreements between Panama, Colombia, and South Korea are going to get passed, what would you say is going to be the toughest part about implementing those free trade agreements? And then there's another one. There's a woman up here. Thank you so much, Sherry Stevenson, Organization of American States. When the panelists responded to the question about duty-free, quota-free, I don't think that they actually responded to the duty-free, quota-free element which is only applicable to the least developed countries. The response was more that what's on the table is not adequate for the bricks or the large emerging developing markets. What is the position with respect to duty-free, quota-free? Is there a problem with that being a part of the package for the end of this year, 2011, as what Director General Lamy sort of is proposing in terms of an initial development early harvest, and then we can continue to negotiate next year? Let me start with Bill, if you want to just take any of those questions. I don't think that there should be a problem. The notion is less is easier to sell than more. It's always been my experience, more is easier to sell than less. But there's some folks that will oppose duty-free, quota-free because of the commercial element with some of the LDC countries. We, in this case, I'm referring to Caterpillar, we're still a plan A company. We still would like to see something that's more robust. And I agree with the Secretary. There's not a lot on the table right now, but a lot of our negotiating partners have also indicated there won't be until the very end of the negotiations. So in a way, there's an element of chicken when you finally do light the fuse for the final time. The goal would be to be as close as we can when we get to that final effort, because there's really been so many disappointments. I mean, only the Doha round after 10 years can use the word early harvest and not have the room start laughing. But from that standpoint, I think help for the LDC or LDC duty-free, quota-free. In the hemisphere, that's primarily just Haiti. But even with Haiti, you would think we should be able to import ethanol and sugar and things of that sort. But the second question dealt with implementation, I don't think the implementation is going to be very hard. We've had good examples, at least in Latin America, as far as Peru and Chile and CAFTA. And they've all had very positive outcomes. One fact that I'd just like to leave you with is when you look at the US trade deficit, which is large, and you break it into the different components, the US has a trade surplus in services. The US has a trade surplus in agriculture. The US has a big trade deficit in oil. And we have an even bigger trade deficit in manufactured goods with the exception of the 17 countries as a group that we have free trade agreements with. We have a trade surplus in manufacturing goods as a group of those 17 countries. And that includes everyone from Israel to Chile to Canada and to Mexico, some of those individual countries we have a deficit. But overall, we have a surplus, which tells you that if we really do have a level playing field, American manufacturers can hold their own and some. So what do we need if we really are concerned about the trade deficit? We need more domestic energy, and we need more free trade. And the next first step in that direction will be with these three free trade agreements. Is this the second one, Ed? Yeah, let me take a couple of other questions. In India, I actually was in India a couple of months ago. And my colleague Bob Hormath has been there a number of times. And in fact, the schedule to be there in the next couple of weeks. And I know that Secretary Clinton at some point is going to go there fairly soon. I think the opportunities in India are immense. And especially in something that I think Caterpillar and a number of other companies are good at. And that's infrastructure. The Indian government has announced plans to invest up to $1 billion of infrastructure in the next couple of years. That means roads, water systems, power plants. They are interested in what we have to offer in the renewable energy front. They're interested in what we have to offer in terms of post-harvest technologies. India, you mentioned the second green revolution. India, as well as a number of other countries, India loses 50% of its produce from the time it leaves the field to the time it gets to the market. If you could do something about that, you'd increase the supply of food in India. That's something that some of our companies are very good at, cold storage, transport. And they're very interested. So I'm very bullish. And I intend to keep pursuing that relationship. On the early harvest, I think there are some wines, actually, the early harvest wines that are sweet wines that some of them take 10 years. But I will agree with you that you can't call anything after 10 years early. The real question, and I think we're open to discussions on early harvest, but the real question is, what about the rest? In any negotiation, what do you leave for a second round? But I think from the USG point of view, as I mentioned, we are not playing a game of chicken. At this stage, we believe we've offered really as much as we can. And therefore, I hope for a good solution. But in terms of an early harvest, that's something we're willing to consider. But again, what do you do with what was supposed to be the rest of a very ambitious agenda? And that's something that still has to be discussed. Nerda. Yeah, I just want to follow up with your comments on the partnerships that are really public, the opportunities in India for investment and so forth. And on the gentleman's question here, expanding trade and economic relations with India, I don't think anyone would think a free trade agreement would be in order with India at this point. But an element of our free trade agreement is a robust investment chapter, or the alternative model would be a bilateral investment tree with Indians, who have amazingly enough showed a bit of interest in the last couple of weeks. And it really, it's an interesting situation the US is in now, because we don't really have a position on what a model bilateral investment treaty would be to engage in that negotiation. And maybe you could update us on some of your internal discussions on this model bit. You've got great information. Well, the Indians have, in fact, expressed interest in pursuing a bilateral investment treaty with us. And in fact, we're expecting to have what we call technical talks with the Indian government soon. And we're really looking forward to that. In terms of the model bit, that was the first item that I tackled back in December of 2009. That was my first assignment. I had just arrived. They said, you're leading, you're co-leading the interagency on the bilateral investment treaty. I didn't even know what an interagency was. Never mind what I was supposed to lead. But I think we still have some issues to resolve. But that's not going to keep us from pursuing technical talks with the Indians. I think the issues that still have to be resolved with the bilateral investment treaty is not surprisingly questions of labor rights, environmental issues, and the like. But for the most part, I think people will find that the new model bit doesn't differ that much from the previous model bit. So we feel with countries such as India that we can start technical negotiations. Time for a couple more questions. Gentleman in the back and then the gentleman up front. Thank you. It's Dana Marshall. Thanks very much for this panel. I wonder if I could draw out to the Assistant Secretary a little bit on the Arab Spring issues and the Doveville Declaration, statements by President Obama, talk about expansion of trade investment initiatives with respect to the region. I wonder if the administration has come up with any more specifics on what might be done in those areas for those countries. And gentleman up here, Steve Landy. Steve Landy, Manchester Trade. CSIS is developing a unique role. And I cannot tell you how happy I'm about it because you're the only group, I should say that, you're the group I know best that seems to combine a trade and a development focus on so many of your programs. And we need more of it. Let me chat a little bit about DFQF and Sherry's question. Who could be opposed to that? I'm not opposed to it if it's put together correctly. We all had a very exciting experience. Few of us had a very exciting experience in Lusaka, including the Assistant Secretary. When Hillary Clinton came, and there's no question, she just rowed the audience, as she rowed most audiences. And what she spoke about again was US commitment to support regional integration. 47 countries in Africa, as Bill Lane just said, can't survive with 47 borders and 47 delays. They really have to be unified. The problem with DFQF as currently constituted is that it excludes 13 countries in Africa. You cannot have regional integration in Africa at the same time as you are giving 30 countries, whatever it is, duty-free access, but not the other countries. And what the European Union did, which at least in my view is both trade and development was a sin, they told the countries, hey, we don't care whether you form a regional integration, if you want to export your cocoa and you're not in LDC, you guys really have to, you guys simply have to enter into a free trade agreement which is completely frozen regional integration in two or three regions in Africa. So the issue which I do really ask is when you're considering this, let's be proud of our goal example. We also have an example in public health. And let's simply say that Africa is on its own development course. We are pushing regional integration and therefore the beneficiaries of DFQF should be the least developed countries, but also the poorer countries or the countries within Africa. I have not heard anybody yet tell me they had a competitive berp about imports from Cameroons. And the US Steelworkers haven't called me and the automobile workers have said they're worried about Congo, Brazzaville, but these are countries which happen not to be LDC. So the only question, and I won't ask the assistant secretary of opposition because I'm just raising the issue, but I really would insist that if we do the DFQF as part of the early harvest that we do include the same kind of thing we have in Agoa and designate all the African countries that belong to regional communities and then require of those regional communities over a number of years that they should begin to negotiate slow increasing forms of reciprocity. Thank you. Well, I thought it was well put and very articulate. Something that's... You're never gonna see a representative from Caterpillar talking about less trade liberalization versus more. We're gonna take free trade wherever and whenever we can get it. And no people call me articulate people. But if I could because we're running out of time, I would like to leave you all with one thought and it's really the challenge that's before us. I've been doing this a long time and when you're in the middle of a lot of these efforts whether it's the free trade agreements right now or whatever, sometimes you lose a sense of perspective and then later on you have a chance to reflect. I now truly believe that Bill Clinton was America's greatest free trade president. I really believe that. And I believe President Bush 43 did more to help poor people around the world, especially in Africa than any American president. And I absolutely convinced that neither one of them got one vote for those two legacy accomplishments. And our challenge here is we gotta figure out a way to get our leaders to do the right thing and to the degree possible to make sure they get credit for doing the right thing. And that is a challenge. Whether it deals with trade, whether it deals with development. I think we all, we can talk about nuances but we all sort of know the right answer. The question is how do we implement the right answer and do it in a way where it's in people's self-interest. And here I'm talking political self-interest. So that's the objective. And so tonight when you're drinking that chilean wine ponder that question and come back to us with some answers. So maybe that's the answer in itself. Meredith, I'll give you a chance on this issue of DFQ. Do you wanna just comment on that? Well, I think it raises, there are a lot of technical issues associated with that and a lot of political issues. And it again raises the being on the same page with Congress and administration because that will take legislation and to implement that. So I think you're gonna need a comprehensive view of where the United States wants to be in the Doha around what the next steps are and whether it would make sense to implement that unilaterally without getting a broader package of contributions from developing countries that will be in their own interest. Assistant Secretary Fernandez. Let's take the Arab Spring question first. We've announced a number of items that I think are concrete. Secretary Clinton announced a $2 billion OPEC fund to help private investment in North Africa and the other parts of the Middle East. Our bureau and the reason I went to Tunisia a month ago was to work on what we call the North African Partnership for Economic Opportunity, NAPIO, you may have heard about that. And that's an effort to bring US entrepreneurs and US investors into North Africa and to have linkages between universities, investors and young people. We will have delegations of entrepreneurs that will be going to Morocco, to Tunisia, and to Algeria in September and October. We'll bring entrepreneurs there. We'll also bring investors. Because one of the things, there's a lot of potential in a place like Tunisia and a place like Egypt, but you've got to find investors that are willing to incubate some of those ideas. And we've, for example, a couple of months ago, we had an entrepreneurship contest in Egypt where we had 100 Egyptian entrepreneurs come and talk to US investors and you actually had some deals that came out of that. So we will have, concretely, entrepreneurship missions, university linkages, missions and cultural missions for entrepreneurs, cultural entrepreneurs in the next two to three months. We're also working to support Egypt's request to be eligible for EBRD funding. That's something that the EBRD did very, very well in 1989 and the late 80s in Eastern Europe. If they can play the same role in North Africa, that's something that we would support as well. So I think you'll see a number of initiatives as well that aren't as public, but I think are also quite important, for example, in Tunisia, one of the things that I've proposed to the government and they seem willing to entertain it is an open skies agreement. Open skies agreement is an agreement to liberalize air traffic between two countries. Well, 11% of Tunisia's GDP is made up of tourism. That tourism is down to 50%. Only 1% of their tourists in good times were from the US and part of that is that it takes forever to get to Tunisia. Well, if we can liberalize traffic, that will help their tourism industry as well. So we've got a number of concrete, both short term, medium term and long term ideas to help support the Arab Spring. Do you have QF, do you want it? Oh, I forgot the question. The, just the... Whether you would unilaterally, we would do a unilateral DFQF absent the rest of the package. You know, I'm not sure. I'd have to get back to you on that one. I think, certainly, I think we are open. The USTR is open to discussing it, whether it's something on its own, we'd be willing to support our need to check with my colleagues. Okay, I think our time has come to an end. Please join me in thanking the panel. Thank you. Thank you, John. Okay, we've got a, just a coming attractions on July 28th, Brian Atwood, TBD, the time, but watch this space. We're gonna have Brian Atwood, who's the head of the DAC and former head of AID will be here. So that's a Thursday, July the 28th. So thanks everybody for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Secretary, good job. Thank you. Thank you. Great job, great job. Yeah, I know. We'll celebrate.