Rome has just hosted the President of the United States Joe Biden and, above all, the G20. Between climate agreements and vaccines, one of the central themes explored in the capital is inevitably the post-covid restart that never as in recent years is and will be the daughter for Italy of close collaboration with Europe and other strategic countries.
In the context of a decisive week for the relaunch in our country, the birth and departure of a new entity that can significantly help the Italian economic restart through a very close relationship with the USA.
It is the Transatlantic Investment Committee founded in particular by Amerigo, AMCham and FederManager and presented in Rome at the American Studies Center on October 28 in the presence, among others, of Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, the Italian Ambassador to the United States Mariangela Zappia and the representative of the US Embassy in Italy Thomas Smitham.
We talk about it directly with one of the founders, Andrea Gumina, Senior Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (and first to the Ministry of Economic Development in various governments) and President of Amerigo.
President Gumina can you explain exactly how the Transatlantic Investment Committee was born?
It is the result of a gestation that lasted almost a year, it is positioned in a global context in profound evolution, which will most likely characterize these twenties of the century, not surprisingly defined by most as a “decade-hinge”. On the one hand, we are already facing some profound paradigm changes – in the field of technologies and socio-economic transformations, which impact on work, health and partly on the very concept of “humanity”.
In particular, as discussed both in the bilateral meetings between President Biden and President Draghi and in those of the G20, the great challenge that faces us is the intertemporal one, that is, how to ensure that the well-being that has progressively extended to a large extent of the globe, coexists with the concept of sustainability – or perhaps of “survival of the species”.
At the same time, we are witnessing a complex geopolitical repositioning, which casts its shadows above all on the meaning of multilateralism, as it has been understood in the last twenty years. For some time now, contexts such as the G20, but partly also the G7, have shown their current limits; while the road is still uphill to make the work of bodies such as the WTO effective. In this scenario and with these objectives, the Transatlantic Investment Committee was born after a year of work.
What will ICT do then?
The TIC starts in parallel with the US-EU Trade and Technology Council, which works to enhance collaboration in the commercial field and on the innovations of two areas of the world that have in common numerous values and points of reference and solid numbers behind them.
The Committee we created with Amerigo, FederManager and AMCham, was created to fuel a pragmatic debate between Italy and the United States on these topics, with the aim of finding, sharing and pushing to apply solutions and tools that increase the capacity of our two countries to respond, together, to the challenges of this new scenario, favoring and supporting commercial and investment relations between Italy and the United States. Starting from the numbers that AMCham gives us and which in September 2021 see 2400 Italian companies active in the USA that create more than 250,000 jobs and a turnover of approximately 129 billion euros.
How will ICT work?
ICT is a platform, which starts from the contribution of the founders but is open to other realities that want to share this path. Inside, the reflection and action on systemic measures with a transatlantic value will be aimed at generating the strengthening of commercial and investment relations between Italy and the United States, as a “medium” to obtain, together, a better positioning of our production systems and research.
A program, therefore, which instrumentally aims to accelerate the interaction processes between our countries, to strategically raise the ability to compete, together, in an increasingly liquid world. Maximizing the joint potential of American and Italian corporations and centers of excellence, in the broader context of social and geopolitical transitions underway, is the main objective of ICT.
How will ICT relate to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan?
Both the National Plan for Restart and Resilience in Italy and the Infrastructure Plan that the American Congress is discussing these days, can represent, in practice, powerful accelerators of a strategy aimed at making collaboration between Italian companies, researchers and investors and Americans, the basis on which to build the competitive positioning of our countries for the next decade.
What will be the next operational steps of the ICT?
In the next twelve months we will deploy the best resources we have at our disposal: the people who, on both sides of the ocean, recognize themselves in the network of skills and values that inspire the founders, and others who should approach the program. The lines on which the ICT will move are numerous. First of all, we will work on a Report, which, within twelve months, will identify, through the involvement of personalities from the world of politics, finance, think tanks and corporations in Italy and the United States, on which scenarios it is most appropriate to focus our work and which instruments are most suitable for encouraging greater exchange and more bilateral investments, as a key to increasing our joint competitiveness.
We will then aim to increase mutual knowledge of the opportunities on which our production and research systems can co-invest together in the coming years: with this goal, we imagine to carry out a roadshow in a selected number of Italian regions, and some ad hoc missions between United States and Italy.
Finally, we will focus on the empowerment of people – managers and entrepreneurs above all – and on building an adequate awareness in the world of institutions and finance, because any challenging project is based above all on the ability of women and men to understand their potential and pursue their realization.
Finally, next institutional steps for the launch of the ICT, Europe and directly the USA, Gumina? A historic opportunity at hand?
Already. By early 2022 we will be in Brussels to present the Transatlantic Investment Committee and by early autumn 2022, at the invitation of Ambassador Zappia, we will share the first ICT report in Washington. From a great crisis a great opportunity arises that even after World War II did not have this form of collaboration. We are responsible for putting it at the service of the relaunch of our great country.
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