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Wilbur Ross
  Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross at National Press Club  CSPAN  May 14, 2018 12:59pm-2:00pm EDT

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partnership in trade with china. just to mention a few things. on steel and aluminum tariffs, he told cnn recently there are about two pints six pennies worth of steel, so that goes up to 25%. that's about the price of a can of campbell's soup. i bought this game today at 711 and it is priced at $1.99. who in the world is going to do that. on another front, and if respondents are u.s. citizens, he wrote a find that the need for accurate citizenship battle in the reinstatement of the question would impose outweigh fears about a potentially lower response rate. his department recently released a strategic commercial space that committees and the spoken about turning them into a gas station to outer space.
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prior to assuming his current position, he was chairman and chief strategy officer at wl ross & co., bloomberg markets named him one of the most 50 influential people and the global finance. he is the only person named to both the private equity hall of fame in the turnaround management hall of fame. he has also been an adviser to new york city mayor, rudy giuliani and was appointed by president bill clinton to the board of the u.s.-russia investment. he's been chairman or the direct or of more than 100 companies, operating in over 20 countries. his work brought him a medal from president kim dae june helping south korea during the financial crisis and in 2014, the emperor of japan awarded him the order of the rising sun. the graduate of yale university and harvard business school also
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served on the advisory board at the el university school of management. we are so very pleased and happy that he has taken time out of his busy schedule to be here with us today. please join me in welcoming to the national press club, secretary of commerce, wilbur ross. [applause] [inaudible] >> thank you. thank you, andrea for that introduction. i'm glad my wife was here. we can never get enough credit at home. it is an honor to be addressing the national press club. when i was a student at el, my
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dream was to be a writer so i joined a chorus called daily themes have required 1000 words of fiction by 10:00 each morning. by the second week, i was out of material, so i dropped the course. as a result, i have great admiration for people like you who write professionally every single day. since we're in the midst of negotiations with china, that will be my main topic. let's begin with two questions. does anyone doubt that china's trade surplus with us have helped to their economic growth? second question, and have the surpluses with us been good for china, how can our trade deficits with them not be bad for us? i believe the deficits and surpluses do matter.
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but not all trade deficits are the same. for example, the united states has historically not been self-sufficient in oil, especially before the shale oil boom. therefore, a country supplying their needs should not be criticized for doing so because we otherwise would have to buy the oil from someone else. i called this a blameless deficit. however, trade deficits caused by artificial means, like asymmetrical terrorist and nontariff trade barriers are not blameless. the airplane full and shameful. there's first chart that the very sturdy man is holding for me shows that in 21 of 23 major product categories, china's
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tariffs are far higher than ours. the similar chart would show almost the same disparities. they both are far higher than the u.s. this is not comparative advantage. this is protectionism. the united states is the most open and the most exploited market in the world. both china and europe eloquently espoused free trade rhetoric, but in actual practice are far more protectionist than the united states. our trade policies mean object database to make their real behavior match their free trade speeches. the second objective is to have our trading partners abide by the rules. a major rationale for admitting china to the wto was the
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expectation that they to abide by the rules, but they have not. instead of the 424 trade actions that the united states has an effect against violations of the rules are anti-dumping or countervailing duty cases against china. they have subsidized their industrial expansion far in excess of demand and have disrupted global market. china has forced technology transfers from companies wanting to sell to a vast market and it has stolen intellectual property. all of these abuses have been well documented in the media come to your media not fake news. the third object to our trade policy is reforming prior areas made by earlier administrations.
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just after world war ii, it was u.s. policy to rehabilitate europe andsia aer their sufferings from the ravages of war. at that time, the united states was the unchallenged economic power and had regular trade surpluses. we created cat, which later merged and morphed into the wto. we also made a systematic and repeated trade concessions to which we remain balanced today, decades later. policy error was that we did not nominate these confessions or provide other mechanisms to adjust policy as conditions change. concessions made to china or europe that might've been totally correct 50 years ago are
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simply no longer appropriate today. yet we are locked into the present trading system with rules created for a different era. despite these blunders, our underlying economic strength -- our underlying economic strength that enabled us to continue to have trade surpluses until the 1970s when now constrained and prematurely asked them to put data. it's just a little teaser. we are now constrained by two side of the wto. one is that most-favored-nation pour msn. this rule says we must apply the same tariffs to every nation with which we do not have the free trade agreement. the second one is the so-called
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boundary. the upper limit on tariffs we can charge foreign nations even with the application of msn. the combination of en masse and prevent us from having reciprocal tariffs because in most cases, our boundary ceiling is at or near our very low mfn applied raid while other nations have higher levels of both. they therefore have little incentive to negotiate. for example, our mfn terrace is to .5%. so is our boundary. we are stuck with it. europe's turf is 10%, four times hours. china is that 25%, 10 times hours. efforts over the last decade and
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a half to negotiate broad changes to these tariff rates have failed in large part because that china's unwillingness to make concessions commensurate with its significant role in the global economy. so china, the world's largest power market is effectively closed door exporters. this is not fair trade. this is not free trade. and there is an even more bizarre outcome regarding mexico. nafta was to become a protective wall around the united states, canada and mexico for our collective benefit. nafta did not stop mexico, which had hired otto tariffs on non-nafta countries from signing a free trade agreement with europe. that agreement permit mexican producers of autos duty-free
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while auto producers from the united states remain subject to europe's 10% tariff. automakers seeking exports to europe to write several time orf normally than from the lower mexican labor cost when they move a plant in mexico. similar examples are found throughout the world. in addition to problems with wto rules, there are problems with the organization's mind that. the wto has 164 members all of which export products to the united states and want to export even more. access to the u.s. market is one of the primary benefit from joining the wto. in each of these 164 countries
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has one vote equal to that of the united states. you can only imagine how complicated the situation that is for our country. the wto constantly complains that the increasing number of anti-dumping and countervailing trade places brought by member countries indicates growing protections. but apparently does not occur to the wto leadership that more trade actions are brought because there are more trade violations. why does all of this matter? the u.s. trade deficit is the largest in the world. it is unreasonable for one country to bear the burden of bolstering the economic origins of the entire planet. the u.s. is one of the least
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protectionist major countries then we have deficits to show for it. china and europe are highly protectionist and their positiv trade benefits wit u reflect that. a few charts will quantify these thoughts. this section chart shows the relatively slow growth of china's economy prior to its entry into wto. the black vertical lines marks its entry in 2001. the remarkable acceleration in growth following their admission to the wto. what changed. just one thing. china joined the wto on beneficial terms, guaranteeing their access to the tariff i mentioned earlier. as shown in the third chart even
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though our total economy has been much larger than china, they're manufacturing out to surpass stars beginning around 2009, 2010 and as you can see has widened his then. thank you. as you can see in the following chart, china's massive growth in out of following admission into the wto has been reflect that in the loss of american manufacturing jobs. the declining black line is american manufacturing jobs. the offending red line is the u.s.-china trade deficit in goods. thank you. it is not just automation that has caused factory jobs. it is also substitution of imports for domestic production.
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there are approximately 100 different ways in which china subsidizes its companies, even to the point of fostering continued its pension of unprofitable factories beyond the growth in demand. the dumping of products outside normal prices is a significant cause of the recent crises in steel and aluminum. once again, their behavior is very different. this fifth chart indicates a little voice box each time china said it would be more restrained on steel. very sharply rising red line shows their actual output. almost every single time despite the statements tohe contrary. and017 i 2eached an all-time
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record. we impose duties in response to dumping, but that cleverly avoid trade actions by shipping products through a third country or with a slight modification of the product or other devices. they recently became subject to a 25% tariff. china's response was to add one end of the product. the actual product as many yards long. not just this little dimension. the wto rules require such specificity in tariffs that this trivial change avoided the original tariff as silly as that sounds. you can't make this stuff up.
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this is what happens every day in the real world. the problem with classic free trade theory is that it does not correspond to reality. the real world explains why the president has insisted on a robust trade policy. in terms of enforcing the rules, the commerce department has initiated 751st and more trade cases than during the comparable period of the last administration. and we will continue aggressively to pursue violations. more comprehensive action has become necessary. two separate investigation, one in steel and the other aluminum has been completed by the
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department of commerce under section 232 act of 1962. under section 301 of the trade act of 1974 has been undertaken by the u.s. trade route against china for intellectual property rights violation. steel and the women of cases are aimed at dealing with today's problems. the 301 is to protect our future from an already evolved a negative trend in technology trade balance. this is the u.s.-china trade balance in high-tech. you can see that back in 2000, it was more or less breakeven and just about every single year and now what amount is around $150 billion, close to 1% of our
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whole economy. china's announced decision to subsidize dozens of the most promising technologies in order to become dominant in them by the year 2025 is a major issue. we welcome legitimate competition, but we cannot tolerate competition that is based on massive government subsidies and industrial cyberespionage. another demonstration of the importance of technology is that the patent office, part of the department of commerce, will issue 10 million patents in june. this remarkable accomplishment far exceeds the patent act committee of any other country and demonstrates again the importance of intellectual property to the united states.
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taken together, the 232 and the 301 are bookends around our trade policy initiative. the logic beyond them is indisputable. both focus on protecting key elements of the economic base that is essential for national security. but the retaliation list published by china have created worry about a trade war. so let's analyze how far it might go. as the president has pointed out, china sells us far more than we saw then and given the upside balance, and they would run out of tariffs much sooner than we would. also, the retaliation would negatively impact their own economy as well as ours. china buys no products for most if they had -- therefore they
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care if they impose will calm across to them. this would be particularly true in agricultural products. china has 20% of the worlds population, but only 11% of the land. they cannot feed themselves, so they must import to seal the gap, especially as they shift towards more approaching content. take soybeans as an example. it is true that china is our largest customer. but it is also true that brazil already account for more than 50% of chinese import while we are at 30%. for brazil to replace, they would have to increase their exports to china by 60%.
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but if brazil could shift that much more common at a competitive price, they would do so already. they have not been holding back just to help the united states. brazil also has issues with climate variability and with the transportation networks and those limits the ability to export materially more than it already does. realistically then, to fill the additional chinese demand, they would have to divert some soybeans now sold elsewhere in return for a higher price to china, and they might resume to disrupt existing customer relationships. but if they did so, and the market that had formerly been supplied by then would now open up for u.s. producers. so at the end of the day, it would be at best a somewhat big
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three for china. this is especially true because food is a much higher percentage of income in china because their incomes are much lower. against this background two weeks ago, treasury secretary mnuchin, peter navarro and i spent two days in china. it was an interesting week. 30 hours on the plane and 30 hours of negotiating. i don't know which was more tiring. we negotiated with the delegation of senior chinese leaders from its various ministries by vice premier wu yi, and we sent them an extremely detailed list of our needs. and they responded with a
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similarly detailed, but as you can imagine, quite different list of their proposals. the gap remains. as has been announced, china's vi premier will soon come to washington to follow up on those discussions. it is difficult to handicap the outcome, but my hope is that the strong personal relationship between president trump and president xi will facilitate an agreement as it seems to be doing relative to north korea. one sure thing is that the president meticulously honors his campaign promises and key among them is making our trade relations with china much more fair. some have said this act to be beyond trade will result in retaliation and undo the benefits of deregulation in the
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tax code. that is an exaggeration. if china retaliates with a 25% tariff on 50 billion of our export as threatened, we would lose a major fraction of that volume, but not all. for the sake of argument, assume that we did lose all of that. they have would be $50 billion. the big number would be painful to the direct target, but would have less than three tenths of 1% impact on our $18 trillion economy, less than three tenths of 1%. and it would be partly offset by the reduced import of the goods on which we have imposed our original 25% tariffs. some portion of those would be produced domestically.
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also, the president has directed the agriculture department to use all of its power to ameliorate the impact on farmers. the inflationary effects would be replacing 50 billion of chinese imports with either i run production or imports from elsewhere would likely cost a lot less than the tariff percentage. but let's pretend that we have to absorb the full 25% of the terrorists come in $12.000000000. this is even more of a rounding error. 71001% well within the margin for error of any economic forecast. and following the same logic would take $180 billion with a
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100% reduction. however, this is far more than the total of 130 billion in goods that we export them. any terracing on goods amounting to more than 130 would have no effect because we don't sell. also, some of the food and lots of the technical products would not be readily replaceable. therefore, there is no real world circumstance where china could cut our gdp by about match. we simply don't export enough to them for that to be able to happen. but the 180 billion buffalo, which is 50 billion more than our total exports to them, maximum impact with you 45 million or one quarter of 1%
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of our economy. given the various offset, the actual impact on inflation of retaliation would be even less than that. instead, china could easily produce our trade deficit a purchasing the larger percentage of their existing 1.5 trillion of imports. a 10% diversion of imports that they make already from other parties to us what almost double our total sales to them. to do so, they might have to get around their own trade barriers, but the more difficult challenge would be the intellectual property area. they are rapidly ramping up their own r&d that they are
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still years behind us in semi conductors and a variety of other products. respect the inner intellectual property and therefore would slow, but not stop their efforts to move their manufacturing up the intellectual value added scale. for example, commerce departments recent enforcement actions against the second-largest telecom manufacturer essentially costed them to cease operations. president trump tweeted yesterday that we will review that action. but it does demonstrate china's dependence on u.s. technology. given all of these factors, and i hope we can make a fair deal. but if it doesn't happen, the trade for tat will not be economically life-threatening to the united states. i look forward to hearing your
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question. [applause] >> thank you, secretary ross. when chinese economic envoy visits washington this week, what are the main topics that you'll be discussing? >> well, there will be a lot of things. one will be tariff barriers. another will be nontariff trade barriers. a third will be the force partnerships and technology transfers for companies operating within china. next would be the discriminatory essays in the procurement area. and finally of course, the big question about respect for intellectual property rights. it also wouldn't surprise me if they would bring up the zte that
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our position has been that an enforcement action separate from trade. >> can you give us a few more specifics of what specifically will be speaking from the envoy regarding intellectual property rights. >> well, i think it is pretty clear. we would like them to respect the rights of our companies, not force them to give up codes. not force them to localize data. not force them to do any of those things. that is the biggest area. and then there are also illicit uses of intellectual property by hiring people who have been there had trade secrets, which they don't honor once they go over there. it is a whole myriad. 10 things you've been reading about in hearing about. >> thank you had mr. secretary,
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president trump tweeted asking your department to quote, unquote get it done when it comes to getting zte back into the goodness. will you, and if so how? >> well, zte did do some inappropriate things. they've admitted to that. the question is alternative remedies to the one we have originally put forward a knot is the area we will be exploring very, very promptly. >> out of style work with the message? how does that work with known sanction violators? >> well, what zte did was violate sanctions both against north korea and against iran.
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that was the original case. we then settled down for a fine of 1.1 takes billion dollars and an agreement to do lots of other things. the texas court appointed rendered his report. we then followed up and it turned out that a number of the statement that the zte had made to us was simply inaccurate and not correct both during negotiations and after. so that is what led to the second brand and our initial thought was to impose the bad list so that they could not receive exports of high-tech material and that is what led, as i mentioned in the prepared remarks, that is what led to it. >> can you confirm whether you are willing to get beijing to
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ease agriculture tariffs? >> well, we are opposed to their discriminatory tariffs in all sectors and agriculture, non-agriculture. we have also opposed to their non-tariff barriers. they have lots of non-science-based restrictions that essentially are tailored to keep u.s. good out of china. one of the meetings where they raised the problem of the so-called mad cow problem, i pointed out to them that both the president and i feed quite a lot of american beef another the fact we are in public office with no signs of mental instability as a result. >> and i would point out for viewers online and our viewers a live broadcast, there are a number of people who are not
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members of the working press. any reaction you hear is not necessarily of the working press. >> assume she was referring to applause and laughter with that. >> du where the president dispute intelligence agencies warning cybersecurity risk of zte felons? and if not, how will the u.s. mitigate the risk of restrictions being lifted? >> well, i have great respect for national security agency's international intelligence agent these. the president and i and the rest of the cabinet get very detailed briefings every day. and so i can assure you we know even more about the situation than they would lay it on. >> since it's classified, and obviously wouldn't be
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appropriate. >> all of it is classified? >> the part that would be interesting is classified. >> okay, fair enough. where do negotiations stand with the e.u. on steel and aluminum tariffs? well, i've had discussions with commissioner and ahlstrom who is fair trade commission may be eight or 10 times since we originally announced at 232 result. we are continuing discussions and i'll be talking with her again tomorrow. as they get closer to the german first deadline, hopefully we will come to a reasonable conclusion. if not, the terrorists will go into effect. >> at the e.u. agrees to a quota on steel but did not agree to lower tariffs on autos, would that be enough? >> i really think that's a
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little bit hypothetical and agree to anything. so i think we will just have to see what comes from the negotiation. >> for aluminum and steel tariff, with the country's extensions be permanent or continue to be decided one month at a time? >> i don't think we would do them one month at a time except if we are in continued negotiation. for example, canada and mexico also have until june 1st. so, depending where we are with nafta on june 1st, the president will decide whether or not to extend their situation. so it is on for possible at the moment. >> so common nafta talk has been heavy. they continued over the weekend. were any agreements reached this past weekend?
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>> i don't believe that any of the big hot topics, the rules of origin, the sunset provision, and dispute resolution provision, big topics like that are still out work in progress. those are very complex issues, particularly rules of origin. it will eventually come down to every comment, every semicolon, everything before we can take your out if it's something workable. >> regarding rules of origin, canada is currently asking for comment on landing the standard. how significant is the loophole for a sealed aluminum into the u.s. and how much foreign steel is making it into the u.s. betwn the two countes? >> we have a significant
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interest in all countries and are involved with better safeguards against transshipped them. europe has already announced a whole bunch of potential safeguard action. those will probably come into place sometime in june or early july. the theory of why we did steel and aluminum on such a broad basis is what i had mentioned earlier. namely the rules of trade are so specific that it's kind of easy to get around them if you don't have a blanket solution. so we have imposed the tariff provision on countries that even sell little or no steel or aluminum because we don't want them suddenly to become a transshipment vehicle. there is one company, which for
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the moment will remain nameless to protect the guilty that does the human habits deal mills that recently started shipping steel to us. that's a little bit aggravating as you might imagine. >> if nafta has not concluded by june 1st, what would be your recommendation and exempting canada and mexico from section 232 tariffs? [inaudible] >> relate? promise? thank you. to what extent are they responding to u.s. tariffs? >> well, that i don't know the answer to. i do know that the vast majority of countries have agreed with us either to accept the tariffs that we put on or to accept quotas which produce a similar
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result. the most noteworthy in the first of which was south korea. as you know, they agreed to accept the 10% tariff on a whim and a without protest and to take a quota on steel equal to 70% of their average shipment from 2015 through 2017. other countries have agreed to hold different quotas all depends on what their history with us has been. i would say the vast majority of countries are not going to make any serious opposition. >> thank you. what trade are you taking regarding companies doing business with iran, russia or north korea? >> well, the north korea sanctions are already in place and not aware of any immediate plans to change them.
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the president has announced that there will be more sanctions on iran. as far as i can tell, it is his intention to keep ratcheting up the pressure on them to bring them back to the table, just as he did onor kor with some hopeful result in the case of north korea. >> on april 8, the treasury department announced sanctions against latin america written and specified that he was designated for his activities in the energy sector. if you take ties to the putin regime into account, can you tell us why you kept your stake in the shipping company navigator holdings which -- [inaudible] for almost a year after you were confirmed. >> the office of government ethics did not require the sale of those holdings number one. number two, they were fully
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digested prior to the sanctions well before the sanctions coming in on april 8th. prior to april 8th, there were no sanctions on that company, so there was no reason. >> what has been the biggest adjustment for you in moving from the business world where people reported to you to where you report to many with different and sometimes conflicting interests and how would you rate congress as well? >> i hope you have two days for a full and fair. the most gratifying thing about the people in the department has been 47,000 people. the most gratifying thing has been the very high quality of some of the long-term civil servants who have been in there. i find them extremely capable technically relatively
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non-ideological and amazingly especially because of the very trapezoid like government pay structure, very willing to work late at night, even work on weekends. in fact, they did this past weekend because of the speech. >> thank you. you have described a strategy pursuing new trade relations, quote, what our country adopting something like the mentality of a large industrial customer and suppliers namely our trading partners against each other. now that you're in the middle of trade negotiations, what differences have you seen between the process of business negotiating with potential business partners, where it's driven profit and trade negotiations which are driven by politics and special interest. >> that is the big difference. you'll probably notice last week when the canadian negotiator was here in the state, and spent 2.5
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hours in negotiations with us in about 40 hours lobbying capitol hill. that is not an unusual ratio for foreign companies -- countries. they try to get around the political process, and the same reason why i'm the tariff will take a particular product from wednesday, maybe where mitch mcconnell is from come and take another product from the state where speaker paul ryan is from. take another product from this date for chairman curtius from. they are trying to be very sensible about putting the maximum political pressure on us. in the case of china, they are blessed by the fact they don't have a november election. so there's not much we can do to reciprocate in terms of levey. >> what are your thoughts on current level of the u.s.
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dollar? and how does the current level help or hinder you in your talks with china? >> the dollar is really more the problem of secretary mnuchin feared i would urge you to invite them here and i'll be glad to discuss it at great length. >> we would love to have secretary mnuchin here. please come to the national press club. i do know that you have commented on dollar levels in the past. perhaps you could let us know where you'd like to see it or what you'd like to see happening by the end of the year. >> it really is secretary mnuchin problems, not by problems. the other currencies do factor into trade balances. it does factor into everything. all interactions between our economy and other economies are interrelated in some way, shape or form. so nothing happens in the
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abstract. >> yes. i think i was a very grudging yes. >> all of that is true. okay, moving on from a level of our current the, have you spoken with special counsel miller or been asked by him about the bank of cyprus and money going to trump? resident trout. >> no. >> can you speak clearly if you accept noaa findings that humans are the primary drivers of climate change? >> that question has more to it. >> it does. >> can you describe how the commerce department policy especially in regards to fisheries. the first question you can address first. >> i'm not going to get into the climate debate. the commerce department noaa has
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issued various reports that reflect the thinking of their scientist in those reports in general have been reviewed, sometimes favorably, sometimes less so by the other people in that field. i think i'll just let the record speak for itself. as for fisheries, one of the great surprises to me on both the confirmation hearing and even more so now that i'm occupying this job has been the amount of congressional attention to fishing, especially to read mapper. so many months about the allocation of phishing capability between the commercial fishermen in the sport fishermen in the gulf of mexico that for a whole month they refuse to eat any red snapper. i am more than had my fill of it every day. so fisheries are very
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complicated areas. many, many species. each one has a whole regulatory apparatus around it. i have one particular ax to grind. and that is more than 80% of our seafood consumed in the u.s. is imported and that seems a little bit silly to me given the coastlines we have and everything else. one of my objectives is to try to change that trade deficit into a trade surplus that should be a thing that we are very good at and it ain't we are very good at so we are going to try to fix that. so that's a very big preoccupation and i've been working a lot with the fisheries and with the private sector how to solve that problem. that strikes me as being
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imported here is grown in the agriculture under conditions that would never be permitted. so it is a kind of subsidy of them. there's also some health issues for some of those imports. we are going to try to deal with that. and we are also going to try to deal with how do we get tthe maximum sustainable harvest in our waters and how do we bring in selected elements of agriculture done properly on our own ports. fishery is a very complicated question, but very important. >> thank you. we've discussed a lot of trade issues here today. >> yes, i noticed. >> moving to a very u.s.-centric topic, defenses, you announced during a senate appropriations hearing that you submitted to the white house the name of your
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senses direct your nominee. can you shed any with us today? >> of course not. that would be a violation of laws worth of roles. >> okay. any hints? >> you'll know the name after the white house to present a formal process begins. >> you have any idea when that might be? a >> no, i don't. but i do know i have very strong confidence in the existing leadership. the two top people are longtime career people, 20, 30 year people. i think they are doing an excellent job and wouldn't be such a bad day if they were there for quite a while. >> thank you. the addition of a citizenship question in the 2020th cent is true sith bipartisan opposition, including state attorney general and others. is there any chance that the
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2020 senses will not ask people their citizen status. >> first of all, it did draw lots of opposition. it also drew lots of support. there are a dozen or so is dave was either governors or attorney general have come out publicly in support of adding the questions. it is not a novel question. it's been asked every year on the american community survey in the exact same form that we are planning to do in the senses this year. 61 million families have already then expose to the question in the sky has not fallen. so i don't think the sky will fall when we add it to the senses itself in 2020. what we are doing to try to assure the maximum participation that we can achieve is several
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things. first of all, we are going to be spending roughly $500 million on advertising for the senses, explaining to folks why it is important in explaining why it under title 30 teen there is no risk that the data will be used for immigration or any other purpose other than compiling the regular census statistics. that law has been in effect for a couple of decades. it has never been a violation of it and i don't there will be because every census employee who has access to the data takes a lifetime of not to reveal it and the penalty imposed by law that someone can get it of violating not is some combination of up to four years in prison and $250,000 fine. that's a pretty stiff impediment
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for people to leak. we also have taken extreme measures for a cybersecurity so that we can try to protect as best one can against intrusions they are in homeland security and various other government agencies hoping us with that. so people do not need to worry that their privacy will be abused by the senses. number two, to facilitate people for whom english is not their main language, we are going to have instructional material in 12 languages available through the basic senses that tells printed universally in both english and spanish. we'll have the very act of call center operation and those will have multilingual resources available to them.
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finally, we are working with community groups. community hospitals, community social organizations, community advocacy groups, trying to get their cooperation to explain to the population why it is important for them to participate. so we are doing everything that we can to maximize participation in the senses. we are also putting the citizenship question laughed so that someone who for whatever reason feels uncomfortable with that question, at least they can deal easily with questions with which which they are not uncomfortable. >> we have less than a minute left of the luncheon. i'm going to ask you two questions very quickly if you can help. you've known donald trump from the early days of business, his early days of business in new
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york. has the president he changed them at all? >> that's a very interesting question. i don't think so. he's had more impact on the national thought process than the session to the presidency has had on hand. .. will the presidents space agenda. how do you see that being rolled out and can america remain a leader in space commercialization? >> we've been given at commerce the task of becoming one-stop shopping for the
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commercialization of space. space is becoming a reality, sooner than you would think. it's probably going to be space tourism no lat than next year. one space operator has already gotten 600 people to prepay $250,000 each for a space ride suborbital space right. so it's coming. but it's also coming, will be space eventual mining activity on the asteroids. they are very rich in minerals. there will be space colonizatio colonization, perhaps of mars, and most interesting of all, the man on the moon will someday be a gas station attendant. what i mean by that is this. in order to get very big payloads to mars, they will be using rockets that go just with enough fuel to get to the moon,
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then refueling on the moon which is very little gravity and, therefore, it's an easy relaunch and that's how we will be able to make it much more economical. so you'll be seeing in the coming days editorials for me that explain it in greater detail, but i really think that space, it's already at $340 billion industry. i think it would be $1 trillion industry before we get too much older than we are already. and so i'm very, very excited to battle the last truly last frontier. >> thank you very much. before we conclude today's event i'd like to let you all know about a couple of upcoming events. on may 17 we have a luncheon with administrative linda mcmahon. may 22 the former president of mexico vicente fox will be your speaking. june 14 a book event with harris faulkner and june 20 june 20 wk
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and breakfast event with jon meacham author of the soul of america, that battle for our better angels. secretary ross, thank you very much for joining us here today. would like to present you with a mug. we give this to all of our honored speakers. we hope you'll use it in good health and that you'll soon come back to the national press club to pick up another. >> well, thank you very much. [applause] >> this may be one of the few gifts that the office of government ethics will fix it. it will of course have to put through their appraisal process, so i'm not likely to sit for a couple of months. [laughing] but when it does come back i'll be happy to use it. thank you. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> this luncheon is adjourned. and i would just ask that everybody stay seated for a
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moment. the secretary has a tight schedule and we would like him and his staff to be able to exit, then once it got everybody else is welcome to leave. thanks very much [inaudible conversations] >> house is back this week to take up a five-year farm bill which includes work requirement for food stamps, or snap recipients. over in the senate republicans what are from president trump at the weekly party conference lunch tomorrow. he's expected to talk about the economy and his upcoming meeting with kim jong-un. on the floor lawmakers will vote on more of the presidents u.s. circuit court nominees and they're expected to consider a disapproval resolution to reverse the net neutrality decision. the senate meets later today at 3 p.m. the house in tomorrow at noon.
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>> earlier this year president trump announced the u.s. embassy in tel aviv would move to