Raimondo said the U.S. is home to many of the world’s best universities, research and development centers, and entrepreneurs, and that it is still the best place to start a business — yet it is no longer leading the world on important indicators of research, development and scientific progress, and it lags behind other large countries in innovation.

That’s partly because there are many fewer manufacturing jobs in the U.S. today, Raimondo said. In the last three decades, the U.S. has lost 9 million manufacturing jobs and 25% of its small- and medium-sized manufacturing companies. That loss not only hurt families in cities across the U.S. but also weakened the country’s supply-chain resilience — leading to the supply-chain issues that have affected all Americans in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that are beginning to have an even larger impact amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Raimondo said she is working with Congress to pass the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which would create more manufacturing jobs and decrease the country’s reliance on overseas goods. The secretary said she is particularly interested in increasing the domestic production of silicon computer chips, which power household appliances, cars and electronics, and which are today mostly made in Taiwan and elsewhere overseas.

“Here’s the reality: Demand for semiconductors globally is through the roof,” she said. “Global companies… are going to build more facilities to make chips. The question is, will they do it here in the United States of America? And the answer better be yes.”

Raimondo said she is intensely focused on revitalizing the country’s relationships with allies across the globe, a responsibility she believes the previous presidential administration neglected.

In a Q&A session with Brown President Christina H. Paxson after her talk, Raimondo recounted the process of initiating an almost “unprecedented” collaboration among the U.S. and its many allies, including those in the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea, to sanction Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. Early on, she said, leaders across the globe agreed to follow Biden’s edict to impose sanctions that would “inflict maximum pain” on Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies without hurting the Russian people.

“We got together and said, these are the products we don’t want to be sold to Russia… technology, semiconductors, avionics, aircraft, all military-related goods,” she said. “The world is with us on this. These actions alone have the potential to paralyze Russia’s military going forward.”

The former governor spoke with passion about advancing equity in order to strengthen the economy. She noted that the day of her speech fell on Equal Pay Day, the March 15 date that marks the two and a half extra months the average American woman needs to work to make the same amount as the average American man in a year. When Paxson asked her how the country might address its historic labor shortage, Raimondo said part of the key may lie in providing free or subsidized childcare. 

“The labor economy is a little hard to figure out, [but] we do know that there are 2.5 million women who fell out [of the labor market] during COVID and who haven’t come back,” she said. “And I know as sure as I sit here, if we provided affordable childcare, those women would come back.”

Raimondo told the audience that Brown and other research hubs had a major role to play in strengthening the American economy. In the era after World War II, she said, the U.S. was the unquestionable world leader in research and development. The country was responsible for nearly 70% of global R&D then — but in 2019, its share was just below 30%.

She praised Brown’s work in translational science, which brings teams of scientists and local clinicians together to turn scientific findings into medical breakthroughs. The University’s Legorreta Cancer Center, she said, is using translational science to understand how cancer grows and to develop better therapies to treat patients, and its Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research is making connections between lab science and clinical research to help doctors detect and treat the disease earlier.

“The work Brown is doing in translational science is absolutely vital,” Raimondo said. “We cannot meet the challenge of climate change… of curing and treating diseases… without more innovation… We better get to work innovating.”