Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo: The 60 Minutes Interview

what does the Secretary of Commerce do until now mainly promote us businesses abroad it had not been a high-profile job till Gina Rond turned the second tier agency into a center of job creation manufacturing and National Security once the governor of Rhode Island Rondo at 52 seems to have come out of nowhere to become a rising star of the the Democratic party and of the Biden Administration as Commerce Secretary she's running new projects that could touch the lives of every American and she's helping lead the expanding cold war with China and confront Russia's aggression in Ukraine the battlefield for both those conflicts is technology the story will continue in a moment if you think about um National Security today in 2024 it's not just tanks and missiles it's technology it's semiconductors it's AI it's drones and the Commerce department is at the red hot Center of technology and at the red hot Center a global Chip War that ramped up says Gina randoo when Russia invaded Ukraine the Commerce Department stopped all semiconductor chips from being sold to Russia every drone every missile every tank has semiconductors in them and you know Leslie you know we're being effective because shortly after we started that work we heard stories of Russians taking semiconductors out of refrigerators out of dishwashers out out of breast pumps getting the chips to put them into their military equipment however the Russians are now working their way around this they are successfully and they're doing better in the war probably because of this you are right in what you say but she says it's absolutely the case that our export controls have hurt their ability to conduct the war made it harder and we are enforcing this every minute of every day doing everything we can these are some of the enforcers P should talk about our controls on Russ Rondo's team at Commerce that monitors and polices the ban on any company in the world from selling products with American chips in them to Russia but not just Russia I've made sure that the most advanced American Technology can't be used in China the Chinese warn that these export controls could trigger an escalating trade War trade with China accounts for 750,000 us jobs and if trade ends we lose our jobs we want to trade with China on the vast majority of goods and services but on those technologies that affect our national security no those um Advanced chips are in consumer goods Banks use them hospitals this is going toward products that are made for civilian use yeah well they also go in into nuclear weapons surveillance systems and we know they want these chips and our sophisticated technology to advance their military her toughness has made her a Target in China where fake ads have her promoting the new Chinese made smartphone last year the government in Beijing hacked her email and when she was in China on a trip ironically to improve Rel ations the tech company Huawei introduced that new smartphone with an advanced Chinese made chip it was kind of in your face as if to say look at the chip that we have and it was a pretty good highlevel chip right well I have their attention clearly and and they've gotten yours well what tells me is the export controls are working because that chip is not nearly as good it's years behind what we have in the United States we have the most sophisticated semiconductors in the world China doesn't we've out innovated China well we you mean Taiwan Fair while American tech companies design the world's most advanced chips none are actually made in the US 90% of them come from Taiwan and they are key to the future of us military weaponry and China from time to time threatens you know the wolf to invade Taiwan and some people say the whole reason is to get their hands on those chips that's a problem it's a risk it makes us vulnerable the problem of our Outsourcing production goes Way Beyond Hightech with millions of American workers having lost their jobs that went overseas something romond knows firsthand growing up as the youngest child in an Italian amican family in Rhode Island this is the old bouleva watch Factory where my dad worked for almost 30 years her dad lost his job when boliva abandoned the factory in 1983 and moved its operations to China it's hard for you to imagine it now as you look around here but this is a you know a bustling place you know they had a thousand people working here food trucks on the sidewalk an electric plating shop there a tool and die shop there and now now this is what you have and how old were you I was in like sixth grade but I saw the toll it took on my dad and my family and that influenced her career choices from when she studied economics and played rugby at Harvard so this is my office to when she left a high-paying job as a venture capitalist to run for public office in Rhode Island this was the day that I was sworn in as state treasurer and and um those are my parents as my dad that's your dad super proud who worked at boua the man who worked at boua the man who taught me about manufacturing taught me that a job is about your pride ability to take care of your family not just a paycheck married with two children Rondo a road scholar and Yale law school graduate was elected the state's first female governor in 2014 as a moderate Pro bus Democrat liberals in your party this is a quote look upon you as a sellout to big business I think that's ridiculous I hold businesses accountable as much as anyone when I tell them they can't sell their semiconductors to China they don't love that but I do that in late 2020 president-elect Joe Biden called her about leading the Commerce Department which till then managed without much fanfare or headlines a mishmash of agencies and assignments ranging from monitoring the weather to measuring the level of contaminants in household dust so one day President elect Biden calls you and said what about being Commerce Secretary and you heard that and thought truthfully initially I thought what does the Commerce Secretary do yeah uh and then the president-elect said to me come I want you to work with me to help rebuild American manufactur in and I called my brother my big brother and he said Gina dad would be so proud you got to do it you got to do it and that was it once at Commerce she began to lean on Congress this is just good business to fund her new programs with a hundred billion doar including 50 billion for the bipartisan chips act that she is now dispensing to reduce America's Reliance on Taiwan it's a huge day for the entire country last month in Arizona she announced her first award for making Leading Edge chips in the US to Intel we are announcing Our intention to invest $8.5 billion in Intel America's Champion Semiconductor Company Intel intends to construct and modernize facilities in Arizona New Mexico Oregon and Ohio she's made two other big Awards WS totaling $1 13 billion to taiwan-based tsmc and the South Korean company Samsung to make the world's most advanced chips in Arizona and Texas Rondo is also spreading her laress elsewhere in the country with another huge initiative the internet for all program we went with her to a corning Factory in North Carolina the world's largest manufacturer of fiber optic table you're looking at fiber on these spools all different colors what's inside of there is actually one of the most precise products ever manufactured by man Wendell weeks chairman and CEO of Corning is expanding production to make some of the 10 million miles of new cable that's needed to connect the 24 million Americans living mostly in Rural America who don't have access to high-speed internet and under prodding by Rond he's investing corning's own Capital to do it we've invested another half billion dollars and doubled our footprint for the us when you're spending all this money to connect you know small numbers of people who live miles away the expense almost doesn't make sense it does make sense the internet is no longer a luxury you need it to see the doctor to go to school to do your business to pay your bills to sign sign up for you know Social Security everyone has electricity in this country everyone ought to have the internet together she says the internet for all and the chips act initiatives will create about a half million jobs by 2030 but Wall Street is skeptical Intel for example just reported $7 billion in operating losses when you go to pick these different companies to give the money to it's it's social industrial policy something you know we gave up because it was shown that Private Industry does a better job picking you're smiling well uh is do they because in the case of semiconductors the market didn't get it right how did we lose this we allowed Manufacturing in this country to Wither on the vine in search of Cheaper labor in Asia cheaper capital in Asia and here we are we just pursued profit over National Security there are strings attached to these grants they have to provide daycare um you want them to have a diverse Workforce be union workers that is not social policy lesli sounds like it it's math this is pure math you won't have enough workers to do the job unless you figure out how to get women working in the facilities but on that point if they need women and women need daycare that's a decision for the company to make why mandated if it's what they need it's not mandated to be clear these are not mandates but it's written in there it is written but you know what's funny I never hear complaints about this from the companies the only complaints I have are from politicians in her three years in Washington Rondo has elevated the Commerce department and its secretary into a high-profile player China wakes up every day figuring out how to get around our regulations we got to wake up every day that much more Relentless and aggressive so I bring it every day so here comes the inevitable obvious question that you know is coming your way you are on a list of future presidential candidates does that sound good to you is it appetizing what sounds good to me is being the best Commerce Secretary there's ever been one qualification for high office is being able to duck a question like that

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 102,011

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, Gina Raimondo, united states department of commerce, China, russia, microchips, cbs news

Id: bmS2_fv9DDM

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024