THE TTALK QUOTES


On Global Trade & Investment
Published Three Times a Week (with occasional bonus quotes) by
The Global Business Dialogue, Inc.
Washington, DC  Tel: 202-559-9316
No.15 of 2020
TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 2020

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TATA'S AMBITIOUS TRAINING TARGET FOR THE U.S.

 "We are bringing the skills, and we are going to work with Ivanka. We want to try and skill one million people in the United States."

NATARAJAN CHANDRASEKARAN
The Tata Group
January 25, 2020


Editorial Note . It has been just over a week since we last published a TTALK Quote. We regret the brief hiatus, and we are happy to rejoin the rich and evolving trade policy conversation with this short entry on a large topic, namely, skills and the American workforce. Today’s quote came out of President Trump ’s recent trip to India. As to whether the trip overall was successful, there are a range of views. Our impression is that it was. We shall have more to say on that in the coming days when we look back at the rally the President addressed in Ahmedabad on February 24. Today’s quote is from a smaller event the following day.

CONTEXT
On Tuesday, February 25, President Trump was in New Delhi were he met with members of India's Business Roundtable. Given the pace of events, February 25 seems almost ancient history. Still, the coronavirus was one of the first things the President talked about. He told the Indian business executives:

We’ve essentially closed the border to areas where we had to close them. And we had very few. We took in 32 people over the last two days because they were sick, and they’re Americans, and they’re great people. … They’re in quarantine.

But the heart of the President’s visit with the Roundtable was what the Indian business leaders told him. Executive after executive stood up and talked about his company’s investments in the United States.  Natarajan Chandrasekaran of the Tata Group was the first to speak. Mr. Chandrasekaran is a recent past chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company for the Tata Group, with global sales of roughly $113 billion. He said the Tata Group operates 10 different companies in the United States. Those companies, he said, employ roughly 22,000 people and generate $22 billion in annual revenue. Mr. Chandrasekaran then turned to the subject of skills and workforce training in the United States. That exchange went this way:

MR. CHANDRASEKARAN: And we are bringing the skills, and we are going to work with Ivanka [Trump]. We want to try and skill 1 million people in the United States. 

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, that’s fantastic. Thank you. That’s great.

MR. CHANDRASEKARAN: So we are deeply engaged with your country.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I heard that you were doing that, and I really appreciate it and Ivanka appreciates it.

COMMENT
That exchange speaks for itself. Still some background might be helpful. On July 19, 2018, President Trump signed Executive Order No. 13845, “Establishing the President’s National Council for the American Worker.”  The first section of that executive order sets out the problem the order is meant to address. It begins:

Our nation is facing a skills crisis. T here are currently [again this is 2018] more than 6.7 million unfilled job in the United States, and American workers, who are our country’s most valuable resource, need the skills training to fill them. 

The order goes on to establish two separate but closely related bodies. One is the Council for the American Worker mentioned in the title, which is made up entirely of government officials. The President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump , is one of the co-chairs of that council in her capacity as Advisor to the President. 

The same executive order creates the American Workforce Policy Board. This is largely a private sector group with big name CEOs, including Doug McMillon of Walmart, Tim Cook of Apple, Tom Donohue of the US Chamber of Commerce and Jay Timmons of NAM. The co-chairs of the Workforce Policy Board, however, are government officials. One is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the other is Ivanka Trump.  And Ivanka Trump was on the trip to India. So she is in the thick of it – it being both the India discussions and the Administration’s workforce development initiatives. 
                                                   ***
Workforce development, skills, training and education – these are not new issues. But the events of the last few years, indeed those of the last two months, have put them in a new light, given them a new urgency. The reassessment of the U.S.-China relationship and the administration’s efforts to bring back or re-shore portions of U.S. controlled manufacturing are pushing companies to rethink their supply chains. In some cases, the result of that thinking may be to leave things as they are. In others, the results may be dramatic change. Whatever the outcome, those reassessments, the processes themselves have been shoved into high gear by the coronavirus, the havoc it has already caused and the disruptions that may be just around the corner.

SOURCES & LINKS
Trump at India Business Roundtable is a link to the White House transcription of the Presidents’ exchange with Indian business leaders on February 25. This was the source for today’s featured quote.
Workforce Development , an Executive Order takes you to the Executive Order of July 2018 quoted above.

In Pictures is a series of pictures from President Trump’s recent trip to India posted by CNN.

The Tata Group takes you to the Wikipedia entry on this important group of Indian companies. 

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