Secretary Antony J. Blinken At a Stakeholders Roundtable

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Gina, thanks very much.  Margrethe, Valdis, so wonderful to have you here with the three of us, with Katherine, with Gina.  And I’ll add very little because we’re most anxious to get into this conversation and to hear from all of you.

But as Gina said, the events of the past couple of years especially have, I think, emphasized to all of us the critical importance of having resilient supply chains.  And we’re seeing this play out in our respective economies, among our respective companies, and among our workers, and virtually all of our – all of our citizens.

These resilient supply chains are critical to tackling virtually every global challenge we face.  We’ve made, I think, real progress in the TTC in strengthening our cooperation, for example, in semiconductor supply chains, establishing an early warning system on semiconductor bottlenecks, promoting transparency in our incentive programs.  These kinds of arrangements are going to help us secure more diverse and resilient supply chains for semiconductors for both of our industries going forward.  And that in and of itself is important progress.

But, having said that, we still have a long way to go and we very much welcome this opportunity to hear from all of our stakeholders on the challenges that they’re facing, that we’re facing, and the priorities that we should set as we’re looking forward to building ever more resilient supply chains.

So let me – let me stop with that.  Let me simply say, though, to President Pines of the University of Maryland, thank you so much for having us here today.  We’re grateful.