Evan Williams: Capital markets and competitiveness-The "fine print" of the transatlantic cooperation

Good morning. It's nice to be with all of you. It's an honor to be invited to speak with such an esteemed colleague here. My name is Evan Williams, vice president in the US Chamber of Commerce's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness. The US Chamber of Commerce is the world's oldest and largest trade association. We represent well over 300,000 businesses before the US government, including policymakers of all stripes and anyone who's interested in Washington DC, in prosperity, in the growth of the United States, and in the growth of global relationships where they're having conversations. The Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness is particularly focused on financial regulation, on credential regulation in the United States, and it's a good opportunity for our companies to come together and think about not just what it means to have investment coming in, but what to do with that investment and how to think about how to grow their company, the country as a whole as well, through labor and other kinds of community development that results from investments in business. So we are thinking very carefully about the moment that we're in. I would like to just start by saying that you may have heard that the United States has adopted an America First approach to global policymaking. I'm here to tell you that just yesterday I was in the room with a top financial regulator in the United States government who reminded us that America First does not mean America alone. And so I'm here to suggest that the transatlantic relationship in particular, but relationship with your businesses and the business that can result from investments and other kinds of economic activity is crucial to America's benefit as well as to yours. And so, I'm here with a message of friendship. I also was in the room yesterday with a number of CEOs from the American chambers in Europe, and they expressed that they'd heard a sentiment, they were feeling a sentiment among EU policymakers, among other policymakers around the globe that we no longer have a system of shared values with other countries, that other countries don't feel that they have a system of shared values with the United States and instead our relationships are predicated on shared value. And I would like to push back on that because it is the business connections that drive our countries forward. It is the work of business and the success of capital markets, global capital flows that allow us to find ourselves in a situation where we're even thinking about what transatlantic relationships look like. And so I would encourage you to remember in the course of difficult conversations that are ongoing in the international sphere that business is the thing that connects all of us, that what business can do in a community, create jobs, create opportunities for a community to grow, opportunities to save and reach financial goals, is the stuff that binds us all together. And so as you think about news related to tariffs or trade, I would encourage you to also remember that America is thinking about the role of business very carefully, and that business is the thing that connects countries together. I'd also just like to say briefly that if you have concern about the particular moment that we find ourselves in with respect to the way that global relationships are being redefined, I would encourage you to think in five-month increments. Five months ago, we were all still thinking about how tariffs were theoretical. President Trump was talking about tariffs on the campaign trail, but no one was quite sure what sort of shape the tariff policies would take. Five months before that, Kamala Harris was ascendant in the US presidential election and trying to carve a lane. And we were hearing that she was enjoying a lot of momentum on the campaign trail. Five months before that, Joe Biden was the presidential candidate for the US presidential election from the Democratic side. And the point here that I'm trying to make is a lot of change has occurred in the last 15 months, but a lot of change has come with this sense of uncertainty. And so as you look five months out from now or 10 months out from now, the picture may look a lot different than it does now simply because we've had so much change at the institutional level here in the United States over the last two years.