Trade & Investment: Reflecting on U.S.-Cuba Relations

(by Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Commerce) On December 17, 2014 President Obama made the historic announcement that the United States would no longer be held captive by the past and would instead move toward normalizing relations with the island of Cuba. This shift in policy was rooted in a fundamental desire to improve the lives of people in both our nations. We want to help the Cuban people connect to the global economy and enjoy a higher standard of living, while also giving the people of the United States an opportunity to learn about a country that is only 90 miles off our shores.

(Guest blog post by Jason Miller, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council at the White House) Today, five years after we pulled our economy back from the brink of collapse, the heartbeat of American manufacturing continues to usher new products and new innovations to the marketplace — driving investments in new technologies that can provide the foundation for future U.S. leadership. In communities across the country, manufacturing firms are again growing and hiring, something thought impossible only a short while ago. Since February 2010, 865,000 new manufacturing jobs have been added – the first sustained job growth in the sector since the 1990s. And new manufacturing establishments have risen in the past two years, as manufacturing entrepreneurship unlocks new opportunities. We need to build on this progress, and we have a long way to go.

(by Marcus D. Jadotte, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Analysis) Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of personally congratulating the Recreation Vehicle Industry Association (RVIA) on its new Market Development Cooperator Program (MDCP) award at the 2015 National RV Trade Show. MDCP Export Awards provide financial and Commerce Department staff resources to trade associations and other nonprofits for projects that will generate exports. RVIA’s award will help the RV industry produce an estimated $336 million in U.S. exports to China, Japan and South Korea over the next three years.

Tune into the final webinar for the year that will study the relationships between different manufacturing-related economic indicators, as well as discover how manufacturing indicators relate to other federal data. Join us for the Manufacturing, Products and Goods Across Indicators webinar on Dec. 16 at 1 p.m. (EST).

The International Trade Administration has released a report detailing the jobs supported by exports by specific product and also within individual industries. This report joins earlier work estimating total U.S. jobs supported by exports, jobs supported by state goods exports, and jobs supported by exports by destination.

(by Stefan M. Selig, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade) Having traveled to Mexico twice in the last two months and four times in the past year, one overarching theme has become clear: the U.S. and Mexico are firmly on a path to becoming a model of a modern commercial partnership. My recent trip to Mexico served to reinforce this message in three important ways.