SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, good morning, everyone. Bienvenidos a Washington.
It’s so good to have so many friends from all across the hemisphere. We wanted to give you, as I said to a couple of colleagues, the warmest possible greeting; we may have overcorrected, because I think we’ve had the two hottest days on record in Washington in almost a hundred years. But take that in the spirit with which it’s intended, which is a warm welcome here. From Canada to Chile, we are bound together by history and geography, by ties of family and community, by trade and commerce.
We’re linked by common challenges as well, from climate change to irregular migration to unequal opportunity.
And we’re linked by share hopes – shared hopes for a more secure, a more prosperous, a more democratic future for all of our countries and all of our peoples.
These collective aspirations – and the conviction that we could better achieve them by working together – led President Biden to launch the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity just two years ago at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.
This partnership is part of a broader effort to modernize our economic relationships, to grow our economies from the bottom up and from the middle out.
To demonstrate that the way to boost our competitiveness is to enhance protections for our workers as well as for our climate; to make our supply chains more resilient; to commit to the trust, safety, and openness of our digital infrastructure.
And to show that our interdependence can actually be a source of strength – not a vulnerability – for our people, for our economies, for our democracies.
That’s the purpose of the partnership. And in just these past two years, our 12 countries have made significant progress in lifting up our communities and further unlocking the potential of all of our people.
We’re making our supply chains stronger and more resilient.
Through our Americas Partnership Platform, the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation – all are providing technical assistance and financing to attract private sector investment in infrastructure all across the hemisphere.
Already we’ve begun to lay the groundwork for $3 billion worth of high-standard, sustainable, strategically significant projects.
By improving the backbone of our supply chains, better infrastructure will help ensure that the goods our people rely on – semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, medical supplies – are more affordable, more secure, and made right here in the Americas.
We’re also investing in our people.
Costa Rica has established a Center of Excellence to prepare workers from across the Americas to be more competitive in the high-tech fields of the future, from cyber security to artificial intelligence.
The United States, Canada, Uruguay have created an accelerator to recruit and train 750 entrepreneurs throughout the region. Later today, Uruguay will unveil a network of angel investors and a digital platform that will encourage greater investment in this incredibly diverse group of entrepreneurs.
We’re advancing the clean energy economy together. Clean hydrogen, for example, produces only water as a byproduct, as you know, as opposed to the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels. It could be a game changer for our climate.
So we’ve launched a Clean Hydrogen Working Group to coordinate on technical as well as on regulatory issues and help grow this renewable energy source across the Americas.
Going forward, our countries will collaborate in new ways to take this partnership to the next level.
Today, I’m happy to announce one such effort: the Western Hemisphere Semiconductor Initiative. Thanks to funding from the bipartisan CHIPS Act, this initiative will turbocharge countries’ capacity to assemble, to test, and to package semiconductors, beginning with Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica.
The United States will also hold a symposium in Mexico this September – following on a very successful conference in January in Costa Rica – to identify ways that the region can play a larger role in the global supply chain for this critical technology.
To continue to grow and strengthen the partnership, we’ve also developed a process for additional countries to join and contribute. We’re eager to add more partners, to bring in more perspectives, to make this group even more representative and responsive, to create even more opportunities for our citizens while maintaining our high standards and upholding the values that unite us.
And we’ll be building on last November’s Leaders’ Summit in Washington with another leader-level summit in Costa Rica next year. And we’re grateful to our partners in Costa Rica for taking on this leadership.
From the beginning, this has been a true partnership in every sense of the word. I’m grateful to everyone around this table, as well as our respective trade and finance ministers, who are working to boost commercial ties and investment throughout the region.
One of the keys to our success is that I think we’ve managed to integrate the ideas and priorities of a wide range of stakeholders, including the private sector, labor, environmental organizations, members of indigenous communities and other under-represented groups. We’re committed to ensuring that these voices continue to inform and shape our efforts.
As I’ve had the great pleasure and privilege of travelling throughout the region over the past few years, I’ve had the chance to meet so many people who stand to benefit from the work of this partnership. I’ve met artists. I’ve met small business owners in Quito, anti-corruption activists in Panama City, entrepreneurs in Santiago.
And the common denominator – and I know you all feel this too – is that our citizens have so much energy; so much determination to build better futures for their families, for their communities. If we follow through on the full promise of this partnership, I think we have a historic opportunity to help realize the aspirations of our people, to strengthen their faith in our democracies, and to build a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous region for everyone.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you’re doing as partners in this endeavor. I’m grateful to have everyone here today. I think our colleagues now will take leave of us and we can get down to the meeting. Thank you, everyone. (Applause.)
