Good morning.  It is a great pleasure for me to be here with Secretary Blinken, who is my colleague, my friend, and, I think, doing an extraordinary job serving this country all over the world. So, thank you for hosting us this morning.

Of course, everything that the Secretary said is true, but it’s also true that what we’re announcing here today will create a lot of jobs in this country. Travel and tourism isn’t just fun and isn’t just meaningful, as you said; it’s real business. It is real economic activity, sustaining millions of good paying jobs in this country. And as the Secretary said, COVID was a crushing time. It was a crushing time for our economy.  It was an especially crushing time for the travel and tourism industry.  And it was painful to see how many Americans were put out of work because of COVID.

And so what we are doing today is making it easier to travel to this country, which will be a real shot in the arm for the travel and tourism industry. The facts are today travel and tourism supports nearly 10 million American jobs – 10 million American jobs – and $2.3 trillion in economic activity. Last year, visitation was 66 million people – as the Secretary said, up from 50 million the year before. By next year, we’re projecting that the industry will be fully recovered from COVID, and we’re on track to see 90 million visitors by 2026. That, I want to point out, is a year earlier than our strategic goal.  So that is a tremendous amount of progress, that’s a tremendous amount of economic activity, and it’s a tremendous amount of Americans whose jobs will be more secure because of the work that we’re doing.

I’m very proud of my team. I want to thank the team at ITA for enabling this. I’d like to thank those who serve on Commerce’s Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. We – some of the leaders in the travel and tourism industry, we heard from them that visa wait times were a pain point, were an obstacle to this commerce.  And that’s why we got together with the State Department to make sure that it will be easier, faster, more streamlined to get your visas and come to the United States.

Tony mentioned also this is going to be a blockbuster decade for sports and sporting events. That’s a huge amount of economic activity.  Think of all the economic activity around a World Cup or an Olympics, or a Super Bowl – we were just talking about. So, we want to make it easier for fans to travel here, for sports teams themselves to travel here.

You might not believe this, but I was a rugby player back in the day – (laughter) – a few years ago. So as a former rugby player, I’m particularly excited that the men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups are going to be coming to the United States for the first time ever. So, I hope a lot of people will come from around the world to see that. I know I’ll be going. And I just can’t wait.

Final thing I’ll say is this is a moment of great collaboration, right. People are often saying: What is the government doing for me? This is an example of the State Department working with the Commerce Department hand in glove, fixing something, right. Maybe it isn’t glamorous, but the work that our teams did is making a difference in the lives of Americans and improving our economy – by just making it easier, working through the plumbing and the red tape to get it out of the way, to streamline the visa and travel process.

So, it’s exciting. I’m grateful to Secretary Blinken, his leadership. He has a lot on his plate right now – (laughter) – a lot on his plate right now.  And this shows you the kind of leader he is, paying attention to the details to make this operation work better for the American people. So, thank you.

Watch remarks by Secretary Gina Raimondo and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken