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Today, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chairman Gregory Meeks, Chairman Mark Takano, and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi held a follow-up press conference on the Congressional delegation to the Indo-Pacific region. Below is a full transcript. The video can be found here.

Congresswoman DelBene: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Takano.

I am Suzan DelBene Vice Chair of the Ways and Means Committee. I’m from the great state of Washington and Chairman Meeks wanted me to point out that the Mariners beat the Yankees last night.

It was really an honor to be part of this journey with Speaker Pelosi and our entire delegation.

And while it was the first time I visited every country since I’ve been a member of Congress, I have visited the region many times in my former career in business and technology.

I know first-hand the very close economic partnership that we have in innovation and the long-term partnerships that we can build on. In fact, over half of all global economic growth is expected in this region over the next 30 years. It was a primary goal of our delegation and the Speaker talks about security, economy, and governance.

On economy, an important goal of our delegation was to talk about how we build stronger economic ties throughout the region, increasing our economic presence is clearly key to advancing other goals that we have in terms of boosting security and strengthening democracy.

We should be strengthening partnerships throughout the region with likeminded countries, and we should also be building on the partnerships we have. I think it is very, very important that we are collectively rule makers in the region, not rule takers.

This is especially true when it comes to areas where we do not have international norms and standards, such as the rules that govern our digital economy or consumer rights in the digital economy.

In our meetings, we discussed the opportunities of new economic initiatives like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework or the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative for 21^st Century Trade, and how we can continue to build on those partnerships to address and strengthen supply chains, so our collective economies are more resilient in the face of a pandemic, wars, or other future shocks.

We also discussed the CHIPS and Science Act that President Biden signed into law yesterday. Another key piece of legislations to strengthen our supply chains and create the resiliency and redundancy that’s so important. And obviously to make sure we have increased manufacturing capacity right here in the United States.

And it’s critical we talked about semiconductors. They are in everything, not just things that we think of as traditional technology like cellphones or computers but washing machines to ultrasound equipment to trucks and airplanes.

The bill also boosts federal investments in research and innovation so that we can continue to lead the way in years to come. That’s an opportunity that we can do throughout Asia as well.

Our overarching goal is to work together toward shared prosperity, and the Speaker talked about shared prosperity a lot on our trip, and how we can use our innovative capabilities to solve new problems like to address climate change, to advance energy security, to bring down inflation, and to promote equality.

It was a rich conversation, an important conversation, and one that we will continue moving forward in conjunction with the administration, with Secretary Raimondo, and Ambassador Tai to continue to build our partnership there.

I want to now introduce a member of the House Intelligence Committee, a proud Representative from Chicago, I think everyone we met knows that Raja Krishnamoorthi is from Chicago. So let me turn it over to Congressman Krishnamoorthi.