Donnerstag Kreis
Stuttgart, October 2, 2008
Ambassador William R. Timken, Jr.

Professor Harms,

Thank you very much for inviting me to one of your quarterly meetings. Your idea of coming together to share best practices is a good one. I would be interested to hear some of your best practices regarding the role of business as a partner for government. The private sector is where wealth is created – where ideas are transformed into innovations that increase productivity and support the standard of living we enjoy in America and most parts of Europe. Alongside building prosperity and providing jobs, the private sector plays an important role in implementing solutions to the wide range of issues on the international agenda.

As you probably know, I used to be the CEO of an enterprise with operations in 26 countries around the world. I have always been convinced that the private sector plays a major role in building global economic growth and prosperity. When a well-run business applies its resources and expertise to problems that it understands, it can have as great an impact as any other institution. Businesses can play a positive role in society -- and, what's more, still be profitable in the long run.

Both President Bush and Chancellor Merkel have offered constructive leadership in addressing the challenges that face both our two countries but it is clear that a multi-stakeholder approach to tackling global problems is clearly essential. Recognizing the importance of the economic relationship, Chancellor Merkel initiated the Transatlantic Economic Initiative. Her language of common purpose – of a strong Europe in partnership with America – is the reality of our cooperation today. But industry must fully back the Transatlantic Economic Initiative for its potential to be realized. My experience during the past three years as Ambassador has revealed to me the limitations of Government as a solution provider.

Today Germany and the United States enjoy one of the largest and most important economic relationships in the world. Our partnership is the success story of modern diplomacy but continued success, however, will require us to look beyond the challenges of yesterday. During the Cold War, mutual security concerns held us closely together. Today those concerns have been overtaken by a level of economic integration that is unprecedented in our relationship. In the past 20 years, no two parts of the world have experienced economic integration faster and more intensely than the U.S. and EU. For that reason, the economic relationship between Germany, Europe's largest economy, and the United States is the most important in the world. It stands for all the elements of a mature and deep bilateral partnership that bind countries together.

Today over sixty years later and twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the hard economic data consistently demonstrates that the U.S.-German relationship is deeper, more fundamental, more interconnected and more important then ever before. Over the course of the past year, we have been tracking some of the indicators that measure the levels of connectivity that link our two countries through trade and investment. They are so broad and deep, and in some cases so seamless, that they are often taken for granted.

Baden-Württemberg is an excellent case in point.

Our postwar partnership was born here in Stuttgart where Secretary of State James Byrnes, delivered the historic “Speech of Hope” in September 1946, paving the way for Germany to reenter the international community. U.S. General Lucius Clay directed the U.S. occupation zone from his Stuttgart headquarters, which today serves as the chancellery of the Minister President.

Fast forward to today: In 2007, the U.S. was the number one trading partner for Baden-Württemberg. There are about 450 companies in B-W with a U.S. majority shareholder and 579 companies with at least 25% U.S. ownership. Together, these firms employ a total of approximately 140,000 people and have a combined annual turnover of 17.5 billion euros. After the Netherlands and Switzerland, the U.S. is the third largest investor in this state. A large proportion of German FDI in the U.S. comes from Baden-Württemberg.

Beyond these traditional measures of economic connectivity are many others that are perhaps less obvious but tremendously important. Technology is the single biggest contributor to economic growth. The private sector is the single biggest contributor to technology. If we added up what each one of the companies represented here today spends annually on research and development, that figure would be very impressive. In 2005 alone, German firms spent $6.3 billion on R&D in the U.S. We also know that U.S. firms operating in Germany value this country's high standards of university-level education and public-private research facilities. We see extensive crossover in public and private sector R&D in the U.S.-German economic relationship.

Here in your state, the Technical University of Stuttgart has a cooperation agreement with a university in my home state -- the Ohio State University in Columbus. The agreement will provide a framework for these two institutions to intensify research concerning global challenges to the automotive sector.

The Technical University of Karlsruhe and the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh established a cooperation agreement in 1991 that has since grown into a joint center, the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies.

In 2008, the Frauenhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems and MIT agreed to establish a research center for renewable energy. Also this year, the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston signed a sister institution agreement to formalize its long-standing academic ties with the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) at the University of Heidelberg.

All of these projects include an exchange of scientists and students as well as joint research projects. This is in addition to the many university partnerships that exist on the institutional and state levels.

While the lingua franca for all these research projects is undoubtedly technical in nature, I am also certain that everybody involved in all of these research initiatives very quickly also become fluent in other languages, including those of collaboration, cooperation and creativity. That was certainly our experience at the Timken Company. We profited from a diverse, global workforce. It helped us blend varying ideas into the best, innovative solutions. We became stronger when we worked together.

So keep in mind that trade and investment statistics – and dollars or Euros – are one way to measure the success of a partnership, but people and places are behind those statistics.

The American people have a unique relationship with the German people, particularly of this state. It has been fostered over many years of association through our military presence, now increasingly through our business presence, but also through personal experiences.

One of the most telling indicators of the close bonds between our citizens is the extensive travel between our two countries. The United States and Germany are top-ranked cross destinations for traditional educational exchange programs, as well as short-term study projects and internships. Germany is the largest U.S. inbound travel market in continental Europe. Americans are the second largest group of tourists to Germany and the third largest in this state -- after the Swiss and the Dutch. There are thirty sister city partnerships between cities in Baden-Württemberg and the U.S. There are four very active German-American Institutes in this state. We invited the directors of these institutes up to Berlin last month to discuss our programs. We certainly appreciate the support of both the state government as well as the increasing corporate support they are receiving.

I am going to stop here. I know I have given you a lot of figures. For the past three years, it has been my job, as President Bush's "man on the ground" in Germany, to build on and also promote the bilateral relationship between our two great nations. To do that, I directed my staff at the Embassy to conduct a massive study to capture both the depth and breadth of U.S.-German economic integration. We received the cooperation of a wide variety of institutions and individuals on both sides of the Atlantic. The statistics in our study -- and I gave you only a very small sample -- are from a variety of sources, but their compilation may well be unique. Our connectivity provides enormous opportunities. It has contributed more than is generally recognized to the prosperity of both of our countries and to the employment of our citizens.

That economic connectivity, however, also brings important responsibilities. Our governments, our industry and our citizens must take exceptional care to preserve the economic glue that increasingly holds us (and global prosperity) together.

Thank you.