Remarks by Under Secretary Marisa Lago at SGH Warsaw School of Economics - May 16
Warsaw, Poland
May 16, 2024
As Prepared
Good afternoon, everyone. Dzień dobry!
Thank you, Vice Rector Prokop, for your kind introduction and for hosting me today at your renowned institution.
Before I continue with my remarks, I want to take a moment to recognize the shocking attack just yesterday on Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico. As leaders across the world — including the United States — have made clear, there’s absolutely no place for such a violent assassination attempt against public officials. I join President Biden and many others in sending wishes for Prime Minister Fico’s swift and full recovery.
I have to admit to being a bit intimidated, as I’ve never taken an economics class. My training is as a physicist, before going to law school.
Before delving into the substance, I hope that you’ll indulge a moment of personal reflection. I’m extremely pleased to be back in Poland since I have a special connection to the country: my husband’s parents, ethnic Ukrainians, grew up in southeastern Poland. As a child, my mother-in-law lived in Uscie Gorlickie near Kraków, and my father-in-law grew up in western Ukraine — in Ivano-Frankivsk. In fact, after World War Two, they were able to migrate to the United States (rather than being shipped to Russia) because, in addition to their native Ukrainian, they spoke Polish fluently and so were transferred to the American quadrant of the Displaced Persons camp.
My husband’s family history — and my own family’s immigrant journey to the United States, fleeing the famine of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s — have been major influences on my life and career. These humble family origins have profoundly shaped how I understand the power of international ties — and economic opportunity — to transform the lives of individuals, families and entire communities.
That promise is precisely what has inspired my career in public service, bringing me to the organization that I’m now privileged to lead: the International Trade Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Just like SGH, we love acronyms in the U.S. government, so we call ourselves ITA for short.
Through international trade and investment, ITA’s core mission is to create inclusive economic opportunity for all communities — not only for U.S. businesses and workers, but also for the countless international companies and governments with which we work, including here in Poland.
With over 2,300 trade and business experts — spread out across 80 international markets and over 100 locations in the United States — ITA promotes exports of some of the most cutting-edge U.S. products and technologies. From clean energy solutions to digital technologies that power the modern economy, we bring high-quality goods and services to thousands of businesses — and millions of consumers — across the globe.
To give you a concrete example, Poland’s nuclear power plant developer — PEJ (Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe) — is partnering with two U.S. companies, Westinghouse and Bechtel, to build Poland’s first-ever civil nuclear power plant. The project’s ultimate goal is to produce enough energy to power 13 million homes, or about a third of Poland’s population — that’s no small feat. This project is a significant milestone for Poland’s energy security and independence — strengthening the country’s resilience to energy supply disruptions, particularly those arising from the geopolitical gamesmanship that we’ve recently seen.
Beyond promoting U.S. exports, our ITA team regularly engages with foreign governments and companies, deepening our cooperation across priority sectors of our economy. A very current example is semiconductors, which are found in everything from your cellphones to fighter jets. Both Poland and the United States have a vested interest in preserving a reliable supply of semiconductors, which are vital to our everyday lives, and also to the dynamism and future of our economies.
That’s why Intel — a U.S. technology company based in Silicon Valley in California — selected Poland last year to invest $4.6 billion (or around 18.7 billion Polish złoty) in a state-of-the-art facility to assemble and test semiconductors. This project is the largest greenfield investment in Polish history. It bears repeating: Intel’s new facility is the country’s biggest-ever investment by a foreign company to build a new operation, completely from the ground up. And the investment is creating around 2,000 new jobs in Poland in the process.
For years, Poland has been an attractive destination for U.S. businesses to headquarter their operations for the broader Central and Eastern European region. This recent investment by Intel is yet another example, speaking volumes about the incredible potential for even stronger commercial ties between our two countries.
That’s exactly what brought me to Poland this week, where I’m leading Trade Winds, the U.S. government’s largest annual trade mission and business development forum. Over the years, through Trade Winds, we’ve brought hundreds of U.S. companies around the globe, promoting leading-edge U.S. products and services, and connecting these companies with potential international partners and facilitating deals.
Every year, we host Trade Winds in a different vibrant, global capital. In 2022, we were in Dubai. In 2023, we were in Bangkok. And this year, we brought Trade Winds to Europe and Eurasia, with trade mission participants able to choose to visit Türkiye, Romania, Italy, Denmark, Kazakhstan — and Poland.
In Poland, in particular, our visit is focused on advancing shared economic and national security goals — not only for millions of Polish people, but also for the broader region. With 15 different U.S. companies spanning cybersecurity to clean energy, our U.S. business delegation here in Warsaw is eager to explore new opportunities to deepen the U.S.-Poland commercial relationship.
Since the fall of communism over 30 years ago, the world has marveled at Poland’s astounding economic growth. In 1989, I was already in my 30s and can still recall the thrill of seeing the Solidarity trade union winning the election. How justifiably proud you must be that, since that time Poland has expanded the size of its economy more than any other country across Europe. This economic success story has been driven by the entrepreneurial spirit and ingenuity of millions of Polish people. And I’m so proud that U.S. businesses have also played a role in facilitating this transformation.
Early on, many of our most innovative and forward-leaning U.S. businesses identified Poland as a key partner in Central Europe. And that foresight has generated impressive dividends. U.S. businesses now contribute over 330,000 jobs in Poland — by investing in local workforce development, by creating hubs for startups and for research and development, and by creating opportunities for the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Strategically, Poland is a crucial NATO ally and a key EU Member State. In light of rising geopolitical pressures, the United States is deeply committed to our partnership with Poland. As a clear signal of this commitment, President Biden, Vice President Harris, four U.S. Cabinet Secretaries and over 170 Members of Congress have visited Poland since Russia’s brutal and unlawful invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In conversations with U.S. businesses, including a meeting that I had earlier today with the American Chamber of Commerce in Poland, we continue to hear that U.S. companies remain bullish on the opportunities for even more two-way trade and investment.
Another concrete example of our engagement is the U.S.-Poland Economic and Commercial Dialogue, an official forum for senior government officials from both countries to make progress on shared commercial priorities. One of the most senior leaders on my ITA team, who oversees all of our commercial officers around the globe, traveled to Warsaw in October 2022 to re-launch this Economic and Commercial Dialogue. As the Dialogue’s first high-level meeting since 2016, this re-launch redoubled the U.S. government’s commitment to strengthening our commercial relationship with Poland, including through the Ministry of Economic Development and Technology and the Ministry of Climate, both of which I’ll be meeting with tomorrow.
Later this Fall, our team looks forward to hosting the next Dialogue in Washington, D.C., driving forward progress across eight different priority sectors: energy, critical minerals, global supply chains, technology research and development (including chips), cybersecurity, infrastructure, women’s economic empowerment, and — an especially timely priority — Ukraine’s reconstruction.
With Russia’s unjust war in Ukraine continuing to unfold so nearby, I want to particularly thank Poland — and all of you here today — for the extraordinary support that your country has shown for Ukraine. The U.S. Ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, an incredibly proud Polish American in his own right, often explains that Poland has transformed into a “humanitarian superpower”. What a remarkably noble title! In addition to hosting nearly six million Ukrainians, Poland has served as a crucial hub for military and humanitarian aid.
In close partnership with Poland and our allies, the United States continues to impose serious costs on Putin’s unforgivable war machine — from export controls that restrict Russian access to important technologies, to import bans and costly tariffs on Russian products, to economic sanctions on Russian officials and institutions.
For my team at ITA, which specializes in strengthening trade and investment, our focus is on planning ahead for Ukraine’s reconstruction. We’re not waiting until the end of the war to get started. We’re eager to support Ukraine and its businesses, connecting U.S. companies to where the needs are — especially in the wake of the economic devastation from Russia’s ruthless invasion, which has already touched nearly every sector of Ukraine’s economy.
Fundamentally, the enduring strength of the U.S.-Poland commercial relationship — and our countries’ staunch commitment to supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty — are grounded in our shared ideals, our democratic freedoms, and our respect for human rights and the rule of law.
At ITA, these shared values manifest in our mission of promoting inclusive economic opportunity. Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility lie at the core of all of ITA’s work. Day in and day out, we serve businesses of all sizes, from startup businesses with four employees to large multinational corporations. And, we’ve been proactively expanding commercial opportunities to a more diverse pool of U.S. businesses — businesses owned by racial and ethnic minorities, by veterans and the differently abled, by members of the LGBTQ+ community, and by women.
And that brings me to one of ITA’s most exciting programs, called EMPOWER HER, which we launched in 2022 with American Chambers of Commerce across Europe. Since then, EMPOWER HER has hosted 80 events across Europe, and over 165 companies have signed onto the Chambers’ Declaration of Support for Women’s Economic Empowerment. Through this Declaration, these companies have committed to increasing female representation in leadership positions, to reducing gender pay gaps, and to investing in concrete leadership development and skill-building programs.
In Poland, the gender pay gap is one of the lowest in the OECD. Something else to be proud of! But even here, the difference in median earnings for women is still 10 percent. And women represent only around 40 percent of senior and middle managers across the private sector.
That’s why initiatives like EMPOWER HER are so crucial, to mobilize governments and the private sector to fully harness the economic potential of all women.
With all of you in the audience today preparing to become the next generation of business and public leaders, I urge you to double down on women’s economic empowerment — not only as the right thing to do, but also as just plain good business sense for the entire economy.
I’ll close today by again underscoring the tremendous commercial opportunities ahead, for both Poland and the United States. As all of you embark on your careers, and in this historic moment for Europe and the world, I encourage you to lead the way forward with an enthusiastic embrace of the power of broadly shared economic opportunity.
Thank you very much for joining me today, and I look forward to our discussion.