Today,‭ ‬I am honored to be in the beautiful city of Jacksonville while I meet with local business leaders from Duval and Nassau Counties to hear their thoughts on the direction of the nation as well as the local economy.‭ ‬As Secretary of Commerce,‭ ‬I oversee diverse areas from the‭ ‬2020‭ ‬Decennial Census and‭ ‬space commerce to trade negotiations and‭ ‬Federal weather forecasting,‭ ‬which is...

On Tuesday, the Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) celebrates its 50th anniversary. When President Nixon signed the executive order creating MBDA, the nation’s minority population was less than 40 million. Nixon recognized that, although minority-owned businesses then were only 4 percent of America’s businesses, empowering the entrepreneurial spirit of minority...

Nearly 60 years ago, a lone American was launched into the great unknown of space — John Glenn had been sent on an orbital mission spanning thousands of miles, skimming the Earth’s atmosphere. Today, America’s leadership in space continues unabated. But it looks quite different. After the Space Shuttle program concluded in 2011, it appeared that Florida’s Space Coast would turn into a “Ghost Coast...

Americans live in a world where other countries impose high tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. U.S. exporters face enormous obstacles in foreign markets, and yet, we maintain the most free and open market of any major country in the world. We have zero tariffs on 61 percent of the total value of our imports, more than 17,000 product types. On thousands of additional products, our tariffs...

Every decade, the Census Bureau fulfills its critical, constitutionally mandated mission to count every person living in the United States. As technology becomes ever more complex and we are drawn closer together through social media, the Census Bureau has adapted to the shifting landscape. In fact, the 2020 Census is engineered to be the most robust and technologically advanced census in history....

On inauguration day, President Donald J. Trump promised America that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” In few areas was that promise better fulfilled than for American coal miners. Before the president took office, eight years of the “War on Coal” had taken its toll on our proud and once thriving coal communities. Between January 2009 and February 2017, the...