Mar 10, 2011: 11th Annual Investment Conference

On Thursday, March 10, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden gave the keynote speech at the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia’s Annual Investment Conference, this year at Moscow State University. His speech to AmCham was heralded as the “signature event of his five-day trip abroad” (ABC News) during which he visited Finland, Russia, and Moldova.

In his AmCham Investment Conference speech, entitled “Building on the Reset,” the Vice President said that the Obama administration believed that the “new frontier” in the U.S.-Russia relationship is “building stronger ties of trade and commerce that match the security cooperation we have accomplished over the last two years.” He added: “In the twentieth century, the wealth of a nation was measured by the abundance of its natural resources, the expanse of its land mass, the size of its army. Russia had all of those things. But in the twenty-first century, the true wealth of a nation is found in the creative minds of its people and their ability to innovate. There, too, Russia is remarkably blessed. Unleashing Russia’s full potential will be a boon and an opportunity, not only for the United States and Russia, but again, for international commerce…. Already our economic relationship is moving to center stage.”

Still, he stressed the need for developing this relationship and reiterated the Obama administration’s commitment to WTO accession and the abrogation of Jackson-Vanik:

…[O]ur trading and investment relationship is not what it should be. As a matter of fact, it was higher years ago than it is now. Russia was America’s 37th largest export market in 2010. The value of the goods that cross our border, the United States border with Canada and Mexico every few days exceeds the annual value of our trade with Russia. We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to do better. And I believe we can.

This is one of the reasons the President and I so strongly support Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization. Accession will enable Russia to deepen its trade relations not only with the United States, but the rest of the world. And it will give American companies a greater and more predictable – important word, predictable – access to Russia’s growing markets, expanding both U.S. exports and employment.

To read the speech in full, please click here.

To read media coverage of the Vice President’s speech to AmCham, please click on one of the following: The New York Times; The Moscow Times; The Wall Street Journal; The Washington Post; Voice of America; and RIA Novosti.

Speakers & Presentations
 

OPENING SESSION SPEAKERS
	Andrew Somers President & CEO, AmCham	Andrey Sharonov Deputy Mayor of Moscow	David Iakobachvili President, Russian-American Business Council
PANEL SPEAKERS
Joerg Bongartz Chairman of the Board, Deutsche Bank Ltd.	Jeffrey Costello Managing Director, President and SCO, Russia, JP Morgan	Mike Dreyer Chief Information Officer, Visa Inc.	Pascal J. Guignard Vice President & GM – New Business Partnerships EMEA, American Express	Karl Johansson Managing Partner, Ernst & Young CIS
Richard Sobel CEO, Alfa Capital Partners	Zdenek Turek President, Citi Russia, Citi Division Head, CIS [presentation]	Anatoly Artamonov Governor, Kaluga Oblast [presentation]	Sergey Beloussov Executive Chairman & Chief Architect, Parallels [presentation]	Marco Blagovic General Manager Russia and the C.I.S., Dow [presentation]
Andrey Goltsblat Managing Partner, Goltsblat BLP	Sergey Kravchenko President, Boeing Russia/CIS	Dmitry Lisenkov Managing Director, Rusnano [presentation]	Vladimir Shmatovich Senior VP for Strategy and Business Development, Member of the Management Board of OAO TMK [presentation]	Leonid Sorkin Country Manager, Honeywell [presentation]

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