Global Development Alliance Initiative

MODERATOR: Good morning and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. We're pleased to have with us today Dan Runde who is the Director of USAID's Office of Global Alliances, which is a very innovative office within USAID that seeks to build public/private partnerships in the development effort across a wide spectrum of activities. It's not just individual programs, but taking into account, if you will, the whole spectrum of the private sector activity as part of the development process.

Dan has had a long career in banking and in the private sector before joining USAID and so I'll turn the floor over to him. And just mention that we have following this particular event, a briefing from New York that ties in very nicely which is with the Hudson Institute and their release of the Global Philanthropy Index, which again, deals with corporate involvement in the development process around the world. So I think that will tie in very well together. And in fact, one of the speakers in that event was in the Office of Global Development at USAID, so Dan thank you for coming.

MR. RUNDE: Thanks very much. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to be here. I wanted to introduce the Global Development Alliance initiative to you. It's called GDA, the Global Development Alliance, and it was launched in 2001 and it's our commitment to work more closely with companies, foundations, diaspora groups, faith-based groups and other private donors who are working in the developing world. And the reason we did so is because there has been a sea change in the way that the world -- the level of interdependence between developed countries and developing countries.

In the 1970s about 70 percent of resources from the United States to the developing world was some form of foreign aid and 30 percent was some sort of private resource. I think some of you have copies that we call our pie chart and you'll see the red slices are foreign aid. And what you see today is that 15 percent of resources from the United States to the developing world are foreign aid and the rest are remittances from diasporas. It's a massive amount of foreign direct investment from the United States. It's private giving of various kinds, whether it's private philanthropy -- you saw it around the tsunami, you saw it around the Pakistan earthquake, but you also see it in terms of just various development initiatives. It's not just the Gates Foundation. It's the money that people donate from their churches. It's the scholarships that the United States makes available to private universities, to students studying in the United States. It's corporate foundation giving and it's private philanthropy of various kind.

And I want to just signal that the event at 11 o'clock, I think will be an interesting one. Dr. Carol Adelman from the Hudson Institute is someone that has worked very closely with the U.S. Agency for International Development for a very long time and has been a real thought leader on development and also on this issue of the role of private actors in development and she helped write a chapter for something called Foreign Aid in the National Interest about four years ago. And this rollout of the Index of Global Philanthropy is a very important contribution. So I recommend that if you want to stick around that's probably going to be very worthwhile. She's a former Assistant Administrator at USAID and is currently a member of what's called the HELP Commission which is a commission set up by the U.S. Congress to look at foreign assistance.

The U.S. Government has tripled foreign aid in the last five years. It's been the largest percentage increase of foreign assistance since the Truman administration, since the Marshall Plan. So it's gone from $10 billion in 2000 to $27.5 billion in 2005. That's according to what's called the Development Assistance Committee, which the Major League Baseball Commission of the development community. The United States sees foreign assistance as a critical vital part of how we engage the developing world, but we also see that no one among us can do this alone. If you look at the President's National Security Strategy, he talks about anything of worth or of value requires us working together and I think this also relates to partnering and development as well. And so we work with companies. We work with host country governments. We work with foundations. We work with immigrant groups. We work with faith-based communities because we think that we have better development outcomes as a result of that; that our development dollar, our foreign aid dollar is better used when working in partnership with others.

And what we want to do is -- I want to just tell a couple of stories. I know that we have some folks from various parts of -- from the Philippines, from Mali, from Rwanda. Let me tell a first story about this. This is Rwandan Blue Bourbon coffee. It was the Starbucks Black Apron special which is their top shelf coffee that they sell. They were selling this last month in 5,000 stores around the country. If you open up this box there's a pamphlet in there that talks about the critical role that USAID played in making possible the availability of Rwandan Blue Bourbon coffee. Five years ago in Rwanda there was not high quality coffee or enough high quality coffee to be grown for Starbucks to buy and then sell to buyers like you and me here in the United States and elsewhere.

But we, in essence, co-funded and partnered with Starbucks to strengthen local cooperatives, working with the local government and Starbucks brought some of its money, it brought its expertise on quality. USAID brought resources. It also brought its program management expertise and then it brought a sustainable outcome for farmers. Because once we've trained up farmers to meet quality standards for Starbucks, it's sustainable and it helps as Ambassador Tobias has been talking about the importance of graduating countries and graduating programs and that it's important for us, for our sustainability and our sustainable development work. It's not necessary to include foreign aid when farmers are trained up on how to sell this product to Starbucks. So this is one example of how we're partnering is in Rwanda.

Another example is in the Philippines. We work -- the United States has a very strong program to support the peace efforts in Mindanao. As part of that work, we have partnered with a very large energy company called Mirant. Mirant and the United States Government in partnership with local Philippine authorities have setup a solar panel rural electrification programs in island communities in the Philippines and that rural electrification allows for small businesses to run, for people to do their homework at night, to provide a sense of safety in communities. So it's very important and it also contributes to broader economic growth outcomes, but it's also about consolidating the peace because there has been a conflict in the Philippines. And so this rural electrification program in partnership with Mirant has allowed us to reach dozens of communities in the Philippines and also helping to consolidate the peace.

Another example is our work in Mali. Mali is a landlocked country in West Africa and a large engineering company that's an expert in developing sugar mills came to USAID and said, we think that Mali is well-positioned to be ultimately a net exporter of sugar in the world. And so USAID, in partnership with this engineering firm said, "Let's build a giant sugar processing factory in Mali." So we worked with the Government of Mali, with the state and local representatives in Mali, with this engineering firm and USAID, along with a number of other donors, and we've attracted a South African investor in sugar, called Lenova. And the South African sugar investor in partnership with others is going to make the largest foreign direct investment in the history of Mali. It's going to employ 5,000 people. And what USAID has said, we'll help -- along with the Trade Development Agency, the Trade Development Agency is another agency of the U.S. Government -- help pay for the business plan development. And USAID helped co-fund sugar varietal testing. You have to test the various varieties of sugar and with those sugar cane tests they went to foreign investors and said, this is a good investment. You should invest in a sugar factory in Mali and it's been the largest foreign direct investment in the history of Mali and it's going to employ 5,000 people. And so Mali will not have to import sugar anymore. It will ultimately be a net exporter of sugar.

Let me tell you one other story. We do a lot of work with Sesame Street in Egypt and other parts of the Muslim world. Sesame Street has great characters. It has great material from all over the world. We helped pay for the production cost to get the show up and running. It's seen in 95 percent of all households in Egypt. Fifty percent of all children that watch Sesame Street in Egypt do so with a parent. Sesame Street teaches literacy, numeracy and other important life skills. And what's interesting about that is, of course, it's in partnership with the Egyptian Government but it's also sustainable because companies like Unilever and others than take Oscar the Grouch or Grover or other characters and put them on toothbrushes and do promotions around those characters, so Sesame Street doesn't need USAID funding over time.

So the messages here are the following from these stories: That working together the public and the private sector can do more; that we bring unique assets, both companies or foundations or others bring. It's not just about the money of the private sector, it's about their expertise, it's about their supply chains, it's about their rolodex. And so working together and also working in partnership with local governments, by partnering with host countries, we're able to have better development outcomes. That's the first thing.

I think the second thing is that the U.S. Agency for International Development has become very good at building these partnerships. We have built 400 of these public-private alliances I just told you about over the last four years. The U.S. Government has put $1.5 billion of its foreign aid money into these partnerships and we've leveraged $4.5 billion of private sector money through their supply chain purchases, through their time, through their money, through their technology, through their expertise. And as I said, it's not just companies; it's faith-based groups; it's immigrant groups; it's foundations.

And then finally, that we've made -- by partnering -- we've made a real difference, whether it's in Mali, whether it's in the Philippines, whether it's in Egypt, whether it's in Rwanda where we've helped 4,000 farmers be able to compete on the global market; that we've made a real difference. And we've been recognized as an agency. The U.S. Agency for International Development was recognized by Harvard University. It won for the first time a prize for collaborative governance. It's called the Lewis and Clark award. They just started this new award for working in collaboration and they see that the Global Development Alliance model is an important example of how government and other actors can work together to get better outcome. That's my statement. Thank you very much.

QUESTION: I was wondering if the Blue Bourbon project in Rwanda -- do you have similar project in Cote d'Ivoire or Ghana, whom happen to be the first producing country of cocoa or coffee?

MR. RUNDE: Yes. We do a lot of work, especially with the cocoa industry in West Africa. As you know, being from West Africa, 70 percent of the world's cocoa crop comes from West Africa. So we do a lot of work with the world buyers of cocoa to improve cocoa quality and cocoa productivity, because that's the most important thing for farmers is to make sure that they're part of the global supply chain. Most of the world's food today is bought in grocery stores. That means that small farmers -- if we want to deal with poverty, we have to deal with rural poverty, because most of the world's poor live in rural areas. And if we want to deal with rural poverty, we have to focus on agriculture. And focusing on agriculture means that we have to connect small-holder farmers, small farmers with global supply chains, global buyers of food, because these global buyers of food have standards, they have packaging requirements, they have quality requirements. But they also have a very powerful purchasing ability. They buy billions and billions of dollars of products, so we do work in West Africa around cocoa. So the answer is yes.

QUESTION: Excuse me. My name is Ashad Mahmud and I represent the Prothom newspaper in Bangladesh. Are you a political appointee?

MR. RUNDE: Yes, I am.

QUESTION: So the next question is you said you launched this program in 2001.

MR. RUNDE: Yes.

QUESTION: And this is in partnership with the private sector and I believe the reason is it will make it more effective and efficient, the programs that you run.

MR. RUNDE: Yes.

QUESTION: Does it in a way an acknowledgement that the government aid program was not working well?

MR. RUNDE: No, it's not at all. I think what the message is, as I said, is that in the last five years we've increased foreign assistance -- we've tripled it, because we see the critical role of foreign aid as the President's AIDS in Africa program, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, our ongoing commitments in other parts of the world demonstrate that we're really strong believers in foreign assistance.

What we have realized, though, and the reason we've done 400 public-private alliances isn't because this is a political initiative in the sense that this is about thousands of people within the foreign aid system of AID saying, if I want to go from point A to point B in development, who else can help me get there? Who else can we work together with? What other assets can we bring to the -- what other assets can other people bring to help us get the development outcome that we all want?

Yes, it was launched under this Administration and I'm a proud member of the Bush Administration, but this is really about foreign assistance. And if you ask people across the spectrum, if you ask people who are career and Foreign Service officers they would say this is one of the most important initiatives that has happened. This isn't political. This is about improving development effectiveness. It doesn't mean that there's not a critical role for foreign aid, but that working together we can certainly get better outcomes, certainly in the agricultural sector, certainly in the youth development sector. There are certain sectors where the private sector or philanthropy brings other assets to give us a better development outcome.

QUESTION: The reason why I raised that point is I came from a country, as you know, which is perhaps the number one experiment ground for all the foreign donors. All kinds of aids goings there with brilliant ideas, you know. I'm just curious, after the Bush Administration goes and if there is a Democrat president, you know, somebody else will come up with another brilliant idea and say, oh, we have to do away with this and come up with another -- so what is the guarantee that it will continue or make some right -- correct impact on the ground? Thank you.

MR. RUNDE: I think the fact that there have been 400 of these over the last four years is a testament to the fact -- we have a small group in Washington. We couldn't do this as a small group -- build 400 public-private alliances. This relates to the fact that USAID is in 80 countries around the world. We have a mission in Bangladesh. We've been in Bangladesh for a very long time with a very large mission.

If you ask the development professionals in Bangladesh, if you ask the development professionals in the Philippines, if you ask the development professionals in Mali, if you ask the development professionals in Egypt, they will say that working in partnership with other actors, other non-traditional development actors helps us do our job better, but this is an important tool in our tool kit.

Harvard University recognized this initiative because this is a development initiative, that this is an important -- this is not a fad; this is something that reflects that the world is more interdependent. So this is not something that's going to go away. Other donors are doing this as well. I spend a lot of time talking to other donors. If you speak to DFID, the British donors, if you talk to GT-Z, the German donors and UNDP has a very large program around this. Secretary General Kofi Annan has been a big proponent of working with the private sector. He has something called the Global Compact.

But more importantly, UNDP and other parts of the UN system, UNICEF and UNESCO, have demonstrated a lot of interest in how can we work in partnership with others. So this is not an Administration-only situation because it's not going to go away. This is part of the development landscape.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir. My name is Ben Bangoura. I'm with Afrotrading.com in Washington, D.C. If you could please tell me a little bit about the impact your organization, which was launched in 2001, has on the development in Guinea, in areas like agriculture, water, please?

MR. RUNDE: USAID does not have a mission in Guinea, Conakry, unfortunately, but we have a number of programs that include parts of West Africa and I can get back to you about more details about impacts in Guinea, Conakry specifically. We can have a conversation about that offline, okay?

QUESTION: Do we know -- can I follow up why you do not have a program in Guinea like in Mali or some other country in Africa? Any specific reason?

MR. RUNDE: I don't know the answer to that. We can find out and get you an answer for that. We're in 33 sub-Saharan African countries. The United States has a mission in 33 of the 55 sub-Saharan African countries.

Sir? You haven't asked a question yet.

QUESTION: Mohammed Elmenshawy. I'm Egyptian. I wonder, do you think the host countries, the Egyptian case here (inaudible) has the biggest mission I believe abroad in Egypt do their part in publicizing your efforts in Egypt? Do you think the appearance of this (inaudible) knows the Sesame show is funded by USAID or do you think the government tried to hide this fact?

MR. RUNDE: I don't know the answer to that. Jeff, do you want to -- my colleague Jeff Greco (ph) could maybe speak to that.

MR. GRECO*: The agency doesn't hide it at the -- when you see the credits at the end of every Sesame Street show, USAID's sponsorship is in the credits at the end of the television shows. And it's not just in Egypt; it's in every country that USAID funds Sesame Street or related Sesame Street activities. So it's public and it's open and you can see our website and find out more information about that at usaid.gov.

MODERATOR: Sir?

QUESTION: My name Jose Katibak. I'm from the Philippines. President Bush has pledged 30 million for development of Mindanao once a peace agreement is reached with the rebels. Presumably, this would be over and above what the USAID is, at the moment, (inaudible) out there. Do you have any projects for -- specifically for this 30 million? What exactly will you be doing in Mindanao to support the peace process?

MR. RUNDE: I don't know the answer to that, but we can check with the Philippines mission about that. But I do know that our Aid missions are asking the question about -- if we want to go from point -- if we want to get certain development outcomes, we want to achieve peace in Mindanao, we are all asking -- as I said before, that this is not a development. In fact, we're all asking the question, "Who else can help us get there? Who else should we be working with to help achieve peace?"

QUESTION: But presumably, you have some framework already, some --

MR. RUNDE: Yes.

QUESTION: -- of what is going to be done with this extra 30 million?

MR. RUNDE: Yes. I don't know the answer to the specifics of what, but we can certainly ask the question and get back to you about that.

QUESTION: No, on this Mirant thing -- you know, this -- it's just to be established in at least 15,000 homes -- so nothing's happened yet or (inaudible) or what?

MR. RUNDE: No, this was rolled out starting in 2003 and so, it's been in phases. We've rolled it out and --

QUESTION: So where are you now?

MR. RUNDE: I can get you the exact numbers in terms of where we are in that, but I know we've made significant progress. We certainly have reached thousands of homes and I can get you the exact number.

QUESTION: Please.

MR. RUNDE: Okay. Yes, please?

QUESTION: Adam Ouologuem with the African Sun Times. I wanted to -- to some extent, are you involved in now a project like the pandemic of AIDS in Africa?

MR. RUNDE: Yes. We actually -- maybe I'll ask my colleague, Barbara Addy -- I want to introduce her -- Barbara is my colleague. We're a team of six in the Office of Global Development Alliances and Barbara has a specific health background. And could we just get the microphone? Thank you.

MS. ADDY: Hi, thank you for the question. And absolutely, we are doing a lot of work through the President's initiative called PEPFAR, our HIV-AIDS program, which is focused on -- in Africa, on 14 focus countries. Mali is not a focus country; however, through our regional office in Ghana, we are doing quite a bit of work on prevention and treatment in Mali around HIV-AIDS and we certainly can get you more information on that and the types of programs that we're doing, if you'd like.

QUESTION: This time could you be more specific about your programs in Bangladesh, if you could give us some kind of concrete examples of what have you done since 2001 and what are your plans and how do you propose to make a difference there so that we can check, from time to time, about the progress, you know?

MR. RUNDE: I'm not as familiar with all the work that we do in Bangladesh. I know that we have a Sesame Street program in Bangladesh. We've also worked -- let me -- what I can do is I'll get you a fact sheet on that. We have some basic information here. I'm not as intimately familiar with the work that we're doing. As I said, we're in 80 countries, but I can get back to you very quickly about that.

QUESTION: I must confess that as a journalist, you know, I'm trained to be a skeptic. That's my training, you know.

MR. RUNDE: Okay, that's fair.

QUESTION: So -- yeah, I mean, I -- we have to do our job. So whenever we hear this kind of things, we just want to make sure that --

MR. RUNDE: Yes.

QUESTION: -- you know, you are really doing something --

MR. RUNDE: Yes.

QUESTION: -- and that makes a difference on the ground.

MR. RUNDE: Take a look, I would direct you to our report, the thicker report that you have in your hands, which is 160 pages. There are detailed 22 case studies in that report, talking about the work that we've done in Mali, and in Colombia, in Russia, in West Africa, in other parts of the world, all over the world all sectors, all sorts of companies or foundations, how we're working with different groups. And so I think that will give you a sense of how we're doing -- that we are making a difference and we're having an impact. And specifically to your question about Bangladesh, we can get back to you about that.

QUESTION: Yeah. I can't really take care of all the countries and I'm really interested in what's happening there.

MR. RUNDE: I understand.

QUESTION: If you could tell us what is the criteria to choose a project or a country to execute a project there?

MR. RUNDE: Well, there are a couple of things that we do. As I said, we're a small office here and so part of our work is to work with the thousand or so staff of USAID that work overseas in the 80 missions where we operate -- in the 80 countries where we operate. And part of our work is to, as we do -- we work on five-year strategic plans that we do in partnership with local governments and we say we want to accomplish three large goals over the next five years in Egypt, for instance. And so we'll work with the Egyptian Government on those three that we'll determine in partnership with our local governments what those three large goals are.

And then after we've decided what those -- we've agreed on what those goals are, we then ask the question, well, who -- as I said, who else can help us get there because we know that working in public and private partners together have better development outcomes than working on our own in many instances. And that -- so what we'll do is we'll look at that and where we're trying to go and then we'll do a number of things to see if we either have relationships on the ground already in Egypt or other countries where we have partners, local private sector partners or we we're working with local philanthropists.

But we'll have relationships, companies or philanthropies in the United States or Europe. We work a lot of with European -- work with European companies and European donors in these partnerships. For instance, we work with Shell in Nigeria. We work with BP in the Caucasus. We also work with Royal Ahold in West Africa. Royal Ahold is a Dutch company. It's the largest buyer of food in the world. Sometimes companies will come to us and we'll look at an overlap of our interests between what we're trying to accomplish with the local governments and what other folks want to accomplish and see if there's an overlap.

We also have a process -- we established a process several years ago at the request of our career Foreign Service staff out in the field to make it easier for people to come to us with good ideas. And we have a document called Annual Program Statement. It's on our website at usaid.gov/gda.

But the point of that document is to say we're open for business for partnerships -- any country, any sector, anywhere. And so companies or NGO partners or other partners can come to USAID with a good idea and say, hey, we've got some resources, we've got some money and we're looking for a one-to-one match, at the very least, in terms of -- if you're bringing cash or you're bringing your supply chain or you're bringing technology or your people, that we want to see that on a piece of paper. We ask for a five-page concept paper and then what we do is we think it's very important to get buy-in of the local field missions, so we ask people to go speak to the USAID mission first before coming and talking to you -- to talking to Washington, because we think it's very important for a field-driven organization and so we look to having organizations to talk to our field missions first, because they're the experts; they know what's going on the ground.

QUESTION: So if you're a field-driven organization, when will you visit Mindanao?

MR. RUNDE: I would like to go. One of my colleagues was there about a year and a half ago and I have an open invitation from the USAID mission and I'd be very interested in going to Mindanao.

QUESTION: And the timeframe?

MR. RUNDE: Probably not in the next six months, but I think possibly in the next 12, I would like to go.

MS. ADDY: I wasalso in Mindanao a couple of -- it's almost a year ago now, working with a group of midwives in a franchise around midwives (inaudible). We can get you more information on that.

QUESTION: I was wondering if you are somehow involved in providing food to the country -- in the Horn of Africa suffering a food shortage now? Are you somehow involved?

MR. RUNDE: In Southern Africa or the Horn Africa?

QUESTION: The Horn of Africa.

MR. RUNDE: One of our most senior officers, Mike Hess, is currently in the Horn of Africa right now, looking at the food situation. The United States Government is the largest donor to the World Food Program and so we take food security issues very, very seriously. We think working in partnership with others that we can also help improve food security. We do a number of projects around the world working on food security issues. Certainly, strengthening agriculture is part of that conversation.

We work with a French company called Plumpy'nut. Plumpy'nut is a peanut butter-type product. And in essence, what this French company has done is given us for free the recipe which obviously has very expensive intellectual property and we're working with an NGO in Malawi to process Plumpy'nut and to create Plumpy'nut which is a very highly nutritious peanut butter product that withstands heat and other situations in food emergencies to meet the needs of the 60,000 food-insecure children in Malawi.

And so they're going to sell this to the World Food Program or feeding programs. And so this company, in partnership with AID, a French company, is setting up this factory with an NGO and then it's not going to need AID money anymore because it's going to sell the product on a sustainable basis to meet the needs of the food insecure in Malawi, for instance. So we think there are a number of ways we can work with companies and others to meet these important issues.

QUESTION: Do you remember the famine in Niger last year?

MR. RUNDE: Yes.

QUESTION: What do you do to avoid such a tragedy next time?

MR. RUNDE: Well, I think there are a number of things the United States Government does. We're very big supporters of these early warning systems. We also, of course, are large donors of food to the World Food Program. But ultimately, we need to support -- we need to continue to support agriculture in developing countries and that we do that in partnership with others. We do that in partnership, as I said before, and so part of it is working with local governments, part of it is working with local governments, part of it is an emergency response, part of it is prevention. So there are a number of parts to that puzzle.

QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Paul Ndiho. I'm from Voice of America. In your opening remarks, you talked about the U.S. Government increasing foreign aid. I just wanted to know which African countries are going to benefit from this aid, if any?

MR. RUNDE: Well, certainly, as my colleague Barbara mentioned, there are 14 focus countries on the President's AIDS initiative. 12 of them are from Africa and so, we can get you the list of the 12 African countries that have been beneficiaries. And of course, the President's Millennium Challenge Account -- Millennium Challenge Corporation has signed a number of compacts in Africa and so, that's going to mean significant additional resources for African countries as well. We can get you those names as well. And also -- that's right, and the President has also announced the Malaria initiative. At $1.5 billion the Malaria initiative is very significant. It goes beyond -- again, it's about transformational development. It's working with companies. We've brought together energy companies, chemical companies. It's about -- it's looking at bed nets. It's also about -- it's also looking at -- and combination therapies and other parts of the chain to defeat malaria. So there's a very significant initiative in Africa. So the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President's AIDS initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, along with the ongoing work of the USAID, is -- means that there are a number of African countries that are benefiting from this.

QUESTION: I did want to mention about one thing. The whole purpose of this aid business is to (inaudible) the condition of the people that -- in the (inaudible) countries. And you must have seen, for the last few years, that most of the countries are saying that -- you know, we really don't need aid that much; all we need is -- so that access to your markets -- lowering tariff -- for Bangladesh, I tell you the USAID annual contribution is about $70 million now. And Bangladesh pays $300 million just in duties to get their products here.

And all they are wanting -- that we really don't want your aid. You just lower tariff payment so that we can get you into your market. So what is your thinking on that? I mean, do you -- I mean, what the Bush Administration is thinking along that line?

MR. RUNDE: It's certainly out of my purview in terms of --

QUESTION: I know. I know you are one of the cogs in this big machine and--

MR. RUNDE: I would just say something very briefly, that President Bush is a strong believer in free trade and has worked through the World Trade Organization to support increasing trade liberalization. He has also done so -- he has also said that it's important that we do so in conjunction with other developed countries, that as we lower tariffs, that others -- Japan and Europe -- should do so as well. USAID has been a big supporter of -- we do -- a lot of our work in Bangladesh has also been around -- I'm almost certain around dealing with the effects of the end of the multi-fiber agreement and the quotas around that.

So we do a lot of work in Central America around increasing labor standards, which makes it more attractive for improving labor standards in factories, in partnership with companies like The Gap and Timberland in Central America to make those factories attractive to The Gap and Timberland. And certainly, we're looking at ways in which we can help countries like Bangladesh and others to – in supporting as they enter the global market and certainly, Administration policy is to support free trade.

MODERATOR: I mean, I think you can look at USTR and look at our negotiations on the Doha round and we have a very forward-leaning proposal on agricultural tariffs and export subsidies and all these other kinds of things. It's a difficult issue and it's

QUESTION: It is. It's --