By Kay Scrimger
July 4, 2011

United States Trade Representative (USTR) Ambassador Ron Kirk addressed the 79th Annual Meeting in Baltimore, reaffirming the Obama Administration’s commitment to work with mayors across the country to get the economy going again.

“You better than any other public officials know how to make investments so that your cities can grow,” he said to the nation’s mayors.

Kirk described how the Obama Administration’s efforts have led the nation in the right direction. “Over the last fifteen consecutive months, we have created 2.1 million jobs, and in the last six months, we have created over one million private sector jobs,” he said. “It’s not enough, but we are going in the right direction.”

“We must out-educate, out-innovate, and out-build other countries so that we can continue to out'sell and out-compete the rest of the world.”

“It is critically important that mayors join us in growing the economy through trade.”

Trade spurs job creation and is a “great way to grow our economy,” Kirk said. With exports up 17 percent each year, he believes that the country is on the way to attaining President Obama’s National Export Initiative (NEI) goal of doubling exports by the end of 2014.

“We are doing all we can do to demystify the issue of trade to small businesses.” Compared to European countries in which from five to seven percent of small businesses export their goods, only about one percent of U.S. small businesses are exporting.

The USTR’s goal is to open up markets and give small businesses opportunities to sell to other countries, thus creating jobs for American workers.

“Exports can help job-creating small businesses run even stronger: American small businesses that sell goods or services internationally have tended to grow faster, pay higher wages, and hire more quickly than similar'sized firms that only sell to U.S. customers,” Kirk pointed out.

In its effort to create job opportunities, Kirk added that the Obama Administration is committed to passing trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Colombia this year, as well as extending Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), and is working with our partners in the House and Senate to move toward this goal.

The Ambassador invited the mayors to visit their website at export.gov to learn more about what his office is doing in export promotion and helping small businesses.

Kirk is a member of President Obama’s Cabinet and serves as the President’s principal trade advocate, negotiator, and spokesperson on trade issues. He served two terms as the first African-American mayor of Dallas.