Greater Irvine Chamber of Commerce
Our mission is to advance the economic vitality of greater Irvine.
Our mission is to advance the economic vitality of greater Irvine.
Consul generals for Canada and Mexico are joining California Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Allan Zaremberg for a panel on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The new trade arrangement came from a year of negotiations after Trump disregarded the former North American Free Trade Agreement as the “worst deal ever made.” Amid the settling in to a new agreement, Canada wants to send a clear message: We love you California. As San Francisco’s Consul General of Canada Rana Sarkar told The Sacramento Bee, “Canadians often fly under the radar, but we are significant partners with the state of California.” According to Global Affairs Canada, California exports $16.8 billion in goods to its northern neighbor annually, with tech and agriculture products accounting for close to $6 billion of that budget. California imports $28.7 billion from Canada per year, with the automobile industry accounting for a whopping $18 billion of that total. Sarkar also underscored California and Canada’s unique parallels, saying that the two “have a lot to learn from each other” in regards to tech, the cannabis industry, combating the opioid crisis and addressing homelessness. Source: Sacramento Bee
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The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) underscores a renewed understating among the USMCA parties on the importance of our mutual trading relationships, everyone agreed yesterday at an international luncheon at the California Chamber of Commerce to celebrate Canada Day in Sacramento. With the support of the Consulates General of Canada of San Francisco and Los Angeles and the Consulate General of Mexico in Sacramento, experts convened at the CalChamber for a thorough update and discussion on the agreement with more than 100 attendees. The Honorable Zaib Shaikh, the new Consul General of Canada in Los Angeles set the tone for the discussion saying that the USMCA is a narrative of “unity, friendship, partnership, between the three countries that make up not only North America, but are in fact listed as part of the USMCA…We have a moment in history, in time…to really show the world we are together and if you’re together it really counts.” USMCA Background The California Chamber of Commerce actively supported the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the United States, Canada and Mexico, comprising 489.5 million people with combined annual trade with the United States being around $1.139 trillion in 2017. In 2017, goods exports topped $525.46 billion...
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China is proposing that it could buy an additional $30 billion a year of U.S. agricultural products including soybeans, corn and wheat as part of a possible trade deal being negotiated by the two countries, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The offer to buy the extra farm produce would be part of the memoranda of understanding under discussion by U.S. and Chinese negotiators in Washington, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are confidential. The purchases would be on top of pre-trade war levels and continue for the period covered by the memoranda, they said. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said it was “premature” to comment on what or how much China might buy as part of a trade deal. “I don’t want to raise expectations,” he told reporters attending the department’s annual outlook conference in Washington on Thursday. “If we reach an agreement on structural reforms we can recover markets very, very quickly.” As part of the talks, officials are also planning to discuss removing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs on distillers dried grains, a by-product of corn ethanol production that’s used in animal feed, people said earlier. Soybeans, corn and wheat futures climbed in Chicago in response to the...
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The Cove, the University of California-Irvine’s tech facility and office space that is home to the school’s Applied Innovation business and entrepreneur incubator program, is gearing up to expand its presence in Orange County’s startup scene. UCI Applied Innovation this month told the Business Journal that it had put the finishing touches on a new lease that will nearly double the Cove’s square footage at UCI Research Park, a 36-building business park next to the university that’s run by Newport Beach-based Irvine Co. Applied Innovation currently occupies about 46,000 square feet of space at UCI Research Park; its new home will run 84,000 square feet, taking up nearly all of a three-story office at 5270 California Ave. that was last used by chipmaker Broadcom Inc. The relocation is planned for later this year. Applied Innovation, the university’s center of gravity for startups, will have a notable partner at the new facility; a multimillion-dollar wet lab incubator space run by the Beall Family Foundation. The Newport Beach-based foundation helped launch the Cove in 2014 with a $5 million gift to speed the “transfer of technology … and discoveries to the marketplace.” Quick Growth This is the third expansion for Applied Innovation since it launched in 2014 as the...
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