Masters of Leadership: Sen. Mitt Romney

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Webinar Summary

Launching Masters of Leadership, a new webinar series produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)® and the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), CTA President and CEO Gary Shapiro spoke with Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) about leadership strategies and what it will take to restart the country’s economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Staying Transparent and Informed

Romney noted the importance of transparency in communication from officials when it comes to information about the novel coronavirus.

“My own orientation is to let people know precisely what we know and what we don’t know,” Romney said. “Because if you set one expectation and then you can’t meet that expectation, you lose credibility.”

Webinar Transcript

Gary Shapiro:
Honesty and ethics are almost your brand. I just have wanted to ask you this next question since the presidential campaign, but when a certain Senate majority leader went to the well of the Senate and insisted that you hadn't paid any taxes, or filed tax returns, or things like that, you turned the other cheek. Was that a ethical, was it a quasi-religious principle that you had, or you just didn't think you'd dignify it with a real response? I'm just curious.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I don't attribute it to any religious conviction, although I appreciate having that brought into bear. When some things are just so ridiculous, I think it's better instead of returning fire just to basically smile and say that's wrong. I feel very sorry that the majority leader at that point was apparently misinformed. Who knows where he got the information. I frankly wish it were accurate, I wish I had not had to pay taxes for the prior 10 years. I think in the prior 10 years, there had not been one year where I had paid less than $1 million in income tax. In most years substantially more than that. He was way off the mark.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
You could spend your time, if you will, battling against people who attack you. There's a saying in politics, I'm sure you've all heard it, which is, "If you're explaining, you're losing." If someone attacks you and then you spend your time talking about how what they said is wrong, to the general public who doesn't pay a lot of attention, all they hear is, "There's some stinky thing about Romney not paying his taxes" and they don't really hear your argument, they don't hear his argument, you're just giving it more air. The better way to go after somebody that attacks you falsely is to go after them on something else and hit back, but not spend your time trying to defend yourself.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
When it came to the Democrats and their attacks on me, my best response was not trying to defend myself and explain, but instead go back at them as hard as I could. Maybe if I'd done a little better at that, I'd have become president. I followed what I thought was the more effective way in dealing with an attack.

Gary Shapiro:
I appreciate your candor and your ethics. I'll bring this back to the present, Americans are scared right now. I can't recall a point in my history, certainly after September 11th it was sudden and it was quick. Didn't seem quick at the time, but we moved on in a couple of months. We're already beyond the couple of months and there's a lot of uncertainty about when the pandemic will end, how the economy will bounce back, and how differently the world will look on the other side.

Gary Shapiro:
Even in Northern Virginia now, things are strange. So many organizations have come to a halt as you and your fellow senators move from handling everyday congressional business to working to help our country weather the storm. You've been exposed to the virus, you went into self quarantine yourself. What would you say to your fellow Americans, in particular Northern Virginia residents and businesses, in this very unusual time?

Sen. Mitt Romney:

I think we're learning more about the virus. I think one of the things that made it so difficult at the outset for people to understand was that we didn't know much about it, the CDC didn't know much about it. Governmental leaders expressed what they knew, but there's so much they didn't know. We know a little bit more, I should probably say we know a lot more, but there's still a great deal we don't know. We don't know, for instance, how many people are asymptomatic. Some studies suggest that the majority of people who get COVID-19 are asymptomatic. Others say, "That's just not possible." We don't know. We don't know if you have antibodies, whether you're going to get it again, whether you're susceptible to getting it again. We don't know whether a vaccine is going to work or not. We hope so, and there are many efforts to try and get one to work, but we don't know whether there will be one that works and if so, when it'll come out.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
My own orientation is to let people know precisely what we know and what we don't know because if you set one expectation and then you can't meet that expectation, you lose credibility. When people don't have anyone they can trust, they get very, very frightened, appropriately so. I found Dr. Fauci, for instance, to be a pretty reliable source of information in that he typically, if he doesn't know something, points out that he doesn't know it. That makes me feel like, "Okay, when he tells me something, then he does know it." That gives me more confidence. Scott Gottlieb as well is someone who I'm watching.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
My own view is this, we can hope that there's going to be a vaccine and/or a treatment which will make this all go away in a big hurry, but we can't plan for that because it's uncertain. What we therefore need to plan for is a circumstance where this virus is continuing to be passed along within our society for at least the next year. I don't want it to go on that long, hopefully it will be much less than that, but it'll probably still be around at least through this year and maybe early next year, and perhaps even longer.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
What do we do in a circumstance like that? That's what I think we have to think through. I think it would be helpful, and at some point I expect to see this, where the CDC or other governmental officials will say, "Okay, look, here's our recommendation for how you reopen because we're not going to keep America shut down for a year." If this goes on for a long time, or we don't have a vaccine soon, or we don't have a treatment soon besides remdesivir, which is kind of a partial treatment, but obviously not that one that's adequate, then we got a plan that we got to get back up and running again. How do we do that?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I would expect the CDC to say, "Okay, here's what we think got to happen in schools, particularly schools in counties where the transmission rate may not be real high, and here's what we think should happen in schools. Here's what we think should happen in institutions of higher learning. Here's what we think should happen in construction, construction where you're not cheek to jowl with the person next to you. Here's what we think should happen in manufacturing and the kind of distancing that may be appropriate."

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I think it's getting to be time for people to see a pathway for each of the major economic elements of our society getting back engaged. I don't think it's going to be a, "Hey, everything's back to normal now, everybody go back." I don't think that's going to happen. I think it has to happen not just geographically in different ways, but also sector of the economy in different ways.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Auto retailing, we can probably go back to auto retailing. Auto repair, we could probably go back to auto repair. But maybe we're not going to do retail in a confined area. Maybe we're not going to be in restaurants and bars as quickly as we're going to be in a retail establishment. But let's lay those things out in a way that's credible, and that people have confidence in and can plan for in the hope that we get a treatment or a vaccine. But by planning to say, "If we don't, here's how we're going to operate." I would suggest that for every enterprise that people say, "All right, how do we operate my business in the coming year, assuming we're not going to have those deus ex machina solutions, here's how we're going to operate our business."

Sen. Mitt Romney:
My comment about focus, focus, and focus, that's what I'd be focusing on. "How do we operate my business and how do I get the cash I need to keep it operating during these challenging times?"

Gary Shapiro:
Basically you're saying plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Yeah, yeah.

Gary Shapiro:
Utah has gotten hit a lot easier than almost every other state. What are you hearing from the residents there? Are you advocating a national approach or is it a regional approach you're talking about?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Yeah. I really think that reopening businesses has to be considered on a county by county basis. States obviously have an overview because they may particularly be concerned about medical capacity to deal with what might spill over a county line from that standpoint. In some cases, in the state of Utah for instance, there's some counties that are quite rural where there have been very, very few cases and perhaps only one death. In a setting like that, they're probably able to go back to certain types of economic activity more quickly than they will in a more densely populated area. I'd look county by county. I think the governor and the state are doing a good job doing precisely that.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Then I would look, if you will, economic sector by economic sector. Some can go back more quickly than others. I mentioned construction, auto retailing, these are entities which I think are able to get back. My own personal view, I'm not an expert in this, not a virologist, but I do believe that what we're learning suggests that our elementary schools may be able to go back and certainly higher education in the fall. Let's let the experts take a look at that, but I do think it's sector by sector and geography by geography.

Gary Shapiro:
Certainly parents everywhere are cheering for you. You've certainly been out in front on the COVID-19 response and you pushed federal leaders to take action and support small businesses and individuals who are suffering financially. What advice do you have for individuals that are running small businesses and startups, and how can they optimize the federal support that they're trying to get through this crisis?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
As you know, the federal program that's received most attention is the PPP program, the Paycheck Protection Program. It really is not designed necessarily to save all the small businesses that may be in financial difficulty, it's designed instead to keep as many people on the payroll as possible so that more people don't get thrown into the unemployment system, which obviously in many states is completely overwhelmed. Just because a business is now shedding red ink does not mean it's going to be able to get a loan from the PPP program and one that gets forgiven. The entities that should take advantage of the PPP program are those which would be laying people off and instead of laying off, they're willing to get a PPP loan so they can keep on paying those people. If they do so, their loan will be forgiven.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Of course, they can also use these funds to pay their rent. I think it's important that we continue to pay rent. I know there's a cue and cry now to say, "Don't pay your rent." It's like, no, no, pay your rent. If you don't pay your rent then the landlords can't pay the banks. If the banks aren't getting paid, we're going to go into a financial crisis of some kind. We've got to keep paying our obligations like that. I would take advantage of the PPP program if you meet those criteria.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Number two, I think you have to look at what are the expenses you are going to be able to pay and which are you not. In some cases, there are some suppliers that are in a financial circumstance where they're able to weather the storm a lot better than you'll be able to and they're going to be able to forebear. I'd also note that there are circumstances where you may decide to give people some flexibility as well, meaning you may decide that you don't need to get paid right away.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I happened to join the board of Marriott Corporation after they had had some difficulty, I think it was in 1990 they were having some challenges, and they went to their largest supplier of soft drinks, Coca Cola, and they said, I'll get these facts close to right, they said, "Will you give us 180 days to pay our bill?" Coke said, "Oh no, our terms are 30 days." They went to Pepsi and said, "If we switch to Pepsi, will you give us 180 days?" Pepsi said, "Absolutely." If you go to a Marriott hotel today, which is the largest hotel chain in the world with 5,000 hotels, they serve exclusively Pepsi products. That's because in 1990, Pepsi gave them 180 days.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I would suggest that as you think about your customers, if you have a customer that you think has great potential down the road, and if you have financial capacity to hold on a little longer than they might, you might give them some terms because that can establish some loyalty that will be paying dividends for you a long, long time.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I would finally just note that this is a good time to be planning what you're going to look like when COVID-19 is over. When you're in the middle of a pandemic, as we are, it's hard to imagine that it will be over. But certainly two years from now, this'll be over, for all intents and purposes, for almost all of us, and our businesses are going to change. Our business model will change. In some cases, some of the team members we have may want to take different responsibilities. Thinking about how to recast your enterprise, not just for this two year period but for the time thereafter, is an important task.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I'll mention one more thing and that is at a time like this, maintaining the psychological help and health of your team members is a high priority. Finding ways to keep in touch with them, to activate them, to have them involved in important projects so that they're using their mind and feel like they're contributing, that's important. Having responsibilities laid out with people working on different projects, even projects that may not be real high priority right now, but having people have something that they need to be doing and that they can feel they're contributing to is important at a time like this. That doesn't mean as CEO you've got to figure it out for your whole enterprise, but you might figure it out for your direct reports, and then your direct reports hopefully will be doing the same things for their direct reports, and so on such that you maintain the psychological health of your entire enterprise.

Gary Shapiro:
That's phenomenally great advice. There's a lot of pearls in that about focusing on the future afterwards, thinking about the opportunities with customers to build loyalty, to employees to build loyalty, focusing on psychological health, keeping people engaged, those are all terrific things. My team got together and said, "We're going to judge ourselves by whether we're a better organization after this and whether we're better individuals after this." It's an opportunity for employees to learn new skills, but it is challenging. I think we recognize that for a lot of people. I think especially people with kids and people who are living alone, it's a really tough one for a lot of people and it's a challenge for our country. That's great advice.

Gary Shapiro:
In fact, speaking of one of the things that you've been such a leader on, before it was fashionable, it was health care reform.

Gary Shapiro:
You've pushed for credit transparency when it comes to pricing and leveraging innovation to reduce costs and you recently pushed for legislation that would require insurance companies to cover telehealth for COVID-19 health care. How do you think this whole experience we're all undergoing will change the nature and the future of health care, and what role can technology companies play in making that future more affordable and accessible?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Health care is one of the great economic, and obviously personal priorities, I think for many, many people across the country as we think about the health care industry. We conservatives typically talk about making health care work more like a market or more consumer driven and I think that phrase connects with some of our voters, but people don't really know what we mean by it.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Just stepping back for a moment, a consumer economy works when people are able to judge the quality of different products, when they're able to assess what the price of those different products, and then they can choose the product that meets their quality and their price expectations. We call that value, quality, and price.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
One of our challenges in health care is that consumers don't know the quality of different providers. They don't know whether one hospital is better than another, whether one doctor's better than another. They also don't know what the price is. By the way, even if they did know the price, they don't care about the price because they don't pay it. Once you pass your deductible amount, it's free. If you're thinking about having a hip replacement, for instance, you know it's going to be well above your deductible, you don't care whether the hospital you have the hip replacement in is going to charge $20,000 or $200,000. I'm exaggerating there, but you don't really care because the price is the same to you.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Health care really doesn't work like a market. Until it does, it's going to continue to consume a larger and larger portion of our economy. We're going to have providers that in some cases don't do a real good job, but because people don't know who does a good job or bad job, they'll stay in business. The cost will continue to go up and up and up because the consumer is not able to restrain that cost by their consumer behavior.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
As I look at health care, I believe there's going to have to be, in our country, one of two directions. One is the direction that my Democrat friends insist upon, which I think would be a big mistake, which is saying the government's going to take it all over and the government's going to tell you which hospital to go to, which doctor to go to, what surgery you can have, what surgery you can't have. They used to talk about death panels, that's not the term I would use, but they're going to make decisions saying, "I'm sorry, you're too old or you're too sick to get this particular procedure." That would lead to a great deal of frustration.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
One comedian once said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait till it's free." Because I can tell you this, in our country where we're used to getting whatever health care we want, and that is those that have insurance, the idea the government's going to tell us, "No, you can't get that," that's not going to sell. Politicians are going to say, "Everybody can get everything." We're not going to have death panels here, we're going to have the opposite. We're going to say you can get whatever you want and the cost is going to become overwhelming.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
What's the alternative? The alternative is a more, if you will, Republican driven or consumer driven approach, which is to say get people more information, more information about the options they have and the health care procedure they might want, more information about the quality of the provider they're considering, more information about the price. Frankly, and I know I don't get a lot of takers on this, but I would far prefer to go to a model that's not deductible based, but instead co-insurance based, where an individual pays a percentage of their bill from dollar one. Perhaps you reach a point where it's like, no, you don't pay any more, you're not going to pay up and up and up, there's going to be an upper limit. That's probably based upon one's income.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
In countries like Switzerland and France, for Pete's sake, it's hard to imagine we're going to learn something from the French, but in France and Switzerland, people pay 25% of their health care bill. As a result, they shop around and they use health care when they need health care, not just when they want to stop in and say hi to the doctor. Not that that ever happens here. But anyway, the idea of having people have a stake in their health care, in terms of a financial stake, and knowing who provides better care, I think that's the direction you're going to see our country have to take if we're ever going to get control of our health care costs. Let's learn from other people around the world. As you know, Switzerland and France, their health care as a spending of their total economy is about half of ours. Let's see how it works there, what works, what doesn't work, but I think that's a better model.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
From a technology standpoint, those that are getting information that can be provided to consumers, I think will ultimately end up with the strongest position down the road.

Gary Shapiro:
Certainly the tech industry stepped up and done a lot of different things to try to help to get to that point, including providing information about people so they don't have to go to a doctor, so that they could communicate. Telehealth is certainly, this is one thing the pandemic has done is it's gotten us working at homes and it's gotten us going to doctors electronically more than we ever have in the past.

Gary Shapiro:
Speaking of technology in this pandemic, you've urged the CDC to modernize data collection and tracking services to have accurate information. How can we go further in this and how does privacy concerns come into play. How can we resolve this as we're flying this airplane? How can we fix it?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Yeah. I find it very frustrating. I spoke with Dr. Redmond at the CDC early on and I said, "What are we finding in our hospitals? What are the ages of people that are going into the ICU? What are the ages of people getting on a ventilator? What are the ages of people that are dying? What are their health conditions as they go into those stages?" The response was, "Well, we really don't know. We're doing a study on one, we're doing a study at another." I said, "Well, don't you know across the whole country what's happening in all the states and in all the hospitals?" The answer is no. He said, "No, no. Actually the hospitals report to state health officials." He said, "In some states they're doing that with pen and paper." I said, "You got to be kidding." He said, "No, they're sending in paper reports." In this day and age, really?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
At the federal level, we have to rely on the information that's coming from the states. The idea that we have a system that is that antiquated, I found to be very troubling. I had proposed to the head of the CDC that they put in place, not building it themselves, but that they work with a technology consortium to put in place a real time data collection system such that when we have a pandemic, like the one we have, we have information and we can make decisions based upon that information. Astonishing to me that we don't.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Now, this doesn't mean that we have to have a patient's name. We may not even have to give them a number. If we're concerned about someone being able to identify an individual by their age or by their health conditions, then just aggregate numbers on a multi-county wide basis and just say, "We got this number of cases, this number of people in the such and such an age," because we're not looking to identify the individuals, we're looking instead to find trends that can inform public health decisions.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
By the way, what I find astonishing is that there's a company in my state, in Utah, been around for 11 years, it provides data to hospitals. This told me what is available. It has some 500 different hospitals that are clients and it tracks what room a particular patient has gone to, how many rooms they've been into, what medical professionals have gone into that room. Such that in the event if there's something infectious, they know who has been there. This is the kind of granular data that our technology companies are able to provide, but unfortunately the CDC and our government doesn't have anywhere near that kind of data.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
My view is that we have antiquated systems throughout government, but in health care, the cost is right now being realized. I think our government and the CDC ought to say, "Okay, we're going to spend the money necessary to get ourselves modernized."

Gary Shapiro:
Okay. Senator, we have just a few minutes left, we have a bunch of questions.

Kara Mauceri:
We sure do.

Gary Shapiro:
I want to start with the first. From Graham Gillan, "How do you think we should think about defense spending post COVID-19? Should we consider disease pandemic prevention part of protecting the country?"

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I do think that health care is part of protecting the country. I think we're going to have to think about where we source our medicines. I think a lot of people were shocked to find out that all of our penicillin comes from China. When we're in a trade war, they could cut that off or raise the price through the ceiling. Some of these things we're going to have to really rethink.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I also would note that we are going to continue to invest in our military. We did a calculation that of the roughly $1 trillion we spend on national defense, including care for our veterans, only 15% goes into procurement of equipment, 15%. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we're spending so much in our military, but overwhelmingly that's on people, and health care, and housing, and the like, and retirees, and veterans. We've got to be doing a better job buying modern equipment to make sure that we don't get surpassed. Is health care part of our national security interest? Absolutely.

Gary Shapiro:
Another question, many experts say a full reopening of the U.S. economy will require widespread testing, a large number of contact traces, and an infrastructure to support extended isolation and quarantine. We currently have none of the above. How do we get there and what is the federal government's role?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I think the federal government has a very important role in every dimension that you've described there, particularly with regards to testing as well as contact tracing. The federal government has to play a role of coordination and management. You can't have all the states and counties competing with one another to buy protective equipment or to buy different tests. The federal government has a role to play there and that, I think, is a vital role.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Would it be essential to have extensive testing to completely open up the economy? I think a number of folks believe so, Dr. Fauci has certainly said so. I hope we get there, I think it's going to be a while. I think until we have antibody testing and almost immediate testing available to people across the country, it's going to be hard to get back into the full swing of things. Yeah, is that important? Yes.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
By the way, some states are doing that already, at least the contact tracing portion. Both my state of Utah as well as Massachusetts began hiring people to do contact tracing. We'll see how effectively that works. Of course, one of the pieces of data we need to know how important that is, is how many people are asymptomatic and can still spread the disease. If it turns out the way some believe that 80 or 90% of the people who get COVID-19 show no symptoms, then contact tracing won't be terribly effective. But as you look at what's happening in China and South Korea, it looks like contact tracing is effective. We need to get some more data to be definitive.

Gary Shapiro:
That's a great response. I have one of your constituents and one of my members, Ray Kimber from Kimber Kable in Ogden, Utah, says, "My company's rapidly adapted and we're doing well. Thanks to CTA and NVTC." No question, just a great comment. Had to add that.

Gary Shapiro:
A question about the media from James Leach, "During this crisis, many of us have become even more dependent on the media to get information, yet it seems the media is broken both on the business perspective and a product perspective. They're not making money and the accuracy of the news coverage is in question. Do you have any suggestions for the media?"

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Yeah. We once bid to buy the Boston Globe. This was in my prior life in private equity and sometimes your best investments are the ones who didn't make it. I think our bid was $330 million. It got purchased by the New York Times for roughly a billion dollars, so we were outbid. I think they sold it for like $25 million. We were happy we didn't make the investment, I'm sure they were unhappy they did.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
If I had a way to turn around the media industry today, I'd be an investor, but I'm not. I guess the Senate keeps me from being an investor anyway. But in my prior life, I would not be jumping in because I frankly don't know exactly how they're going to proceed. What we found as we look at broadcast media is that the cable networks that are doing best are those that appeal to one side of the other. CNN and MSNBC appeal on the left and together they have about half the cable market. Then the other side is FOX, and they have the other half of the, if you will, the news side of the cable market.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
The broadcast, ABC, NBC, CBS, they're of course substantially larger and they try and shoot more down the middle. There'd be an argument, I'm sure, from people on both sides as to whether they're down the middle or not, but I find them to be informative. Yet as in all matters relating to human activity, they want to show the alarming, the unusual, the bizarre. That's what we're drawn to. We look at the automobile accident, we don't look at the cars that just drive by safely. It is more alarmist than we might ideally find.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
From my own standpoint, I read the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and then I read my Utah papers, the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune. I get pretty good information and I find that there are people I follow that I find have more credibility than others. In this matter, I follow Dr. Fauci, I follow Scott Gottlieb, and I find credibility as a real value in a setting like this. I don't have an answer for how to get these guys more successful. I'll give that some thought.

Gary Shapiro:
OK. From Chicago, one of my former board members, Sally Washlow, says, "Hello. I work with many senior leaders at companies and we often frame the discussion, 'How do you want to be known coming out of this crisis,' and that provides the framework for the strategy. As I translate that to a federal level, how can we come out, as a country, with a strategy? How do we want it to be known coming out of this crisis?"

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Well, I'm afraid what we're known for right now is not something which we'd be real proud of. I've read some journals outside the country that have expressed some surprise. They know America is the technology leader of the world, they know we're a leader on so many dimensions, and they would have expected us to have jumped on this in a very aggressive way from the very beginning, that we would have had tests out in a very rapid manner, that we would have put in place the kinds of procedures that have been effectively used in South Korea, and Singapore, Taiwan, to a degree in Germany as well. But we just haven't done that. I think we got a bit of a, I don't know, not a black eye, but something akin to that as the world has watched and been surprised that we just didn't get on top of this in the way they would have expected us to.

Sen. Mitt Romney:

I think the world will very much want to see us help pull the world economy out. We have typically, in prior times when there's been a recession, it has been the U.S. that has been able to rekindle the global economy. Frankly, it's been our consumers that had done that primarily. Hopefully we'll be able to do the same thing this time, not by opening too fast or too aggressively and sending us into another tailspin of disease, but instead, by reopening in a thoughtful, appropriate way that allows us to restart the economy without restarting a pandemic in our own nation or a cascade of a pandemic in our own nation.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
How do we get known? My hope is always that we're known as being a good people that try to act out of our fundamental principles. America sharing principles of honesty, integrity, virtue, democracy, human rights, freedom. These values, I hope, continue to be the hallmark of our country and we promote those things throughout the world.

Gary Shapiro:
Two quick final questions. One, what you just mentioned about those values, how does China and it's influence portray. You obviously have a lot of foreign policy experience, you're on relevant committees, you've talked about their values versus our Western values. The first question. The second, and you can answer them in either order, Utah and Virginia had a lot in common, they're both really strong tech states, they're doing well, they are top of CTA's innovation scorecard as a top core innovation champions. Utah's tech industry, you've been a big champion of that, what should other political leaders be doing to support their state tech industries?

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Well, I-

Gary Shapiro:
One's big, one's steady.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
Yeah. With regards to China, they have a very different model than we do. China is now a global competitor, it will be the world's largest economy at some point. It seeks to be the world's strongest military and is on track to become a very extraordinarily powerful military. It seeks to be the world's geopolitical leader. Their philosophy, as we all know, is very different than ours. It is authoritarian in nature, it is predatory as a competitor, it does not play by the rules that the rest of the world plays by. They've been getting away with murder. Not literally, well, figuratively at least.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
I think we're right to blow the whistle on China, we're right to push back. I believe it's essential for the nations that follow the rules of global trade to come together and to decide what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, and then sit down with China and say, "Look, we've got two ways we can go with this. But for you to continue to have the kind of unfettered access to our markets that you've had, you're going to have to start playing by the rules."

Sen. Mitt Romney:
That is something I think we have to do urgently because otherwise they're going to crush business after business, put us out of business by pursuing predatory pricing techniques as well as other predatory activities. They're a tough competitor, they believe they're doing what's in their best interest, which is their right to do. But we very much have to come together, I believe, as free nations, as nations following the rules to do what's in our best interest.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
With regards to our respective states, no question. Virginia and Utah are technology states and what they have done that made that so effective as decided that was what they wanted to be. Deciding what you want to be and then pursuing an aggressive effort to become that will allow you to ultimately be more successful than if you just hope it happens, because it won't happen on its own.

Sen. Mitt Romney:
As you know, I served as the governor of Massachusetts for a while and one of the things we decided in Massachusetts is that we wanted to be the center for biotechnology. A lot of other states wanted to do that, we decided to really do it and to make investments to say, "We're going to help bring those companies here in research and in manufacturing biotechnology products." Many, many years later, the state's been more successful at that. If you want it, make the effort and get some powerhouses like Bobby Kilburg to make it happen.

Gary Shapiro:
OK. Great. Thank you so much, Senator. This has been fantastic information, honesty, candor, advice. Wish you health, wish Utah health, and of course, the country. I don't know if you can go to an all audience thing and give our ritual handclaps or however we do it, but thank you so much.

Kara Mauceri:
I don't think we can, but thank you very much, both Senator Romney and Gary, for this fascinating conversation today. You both did a great job, I didn't have to step in. We have lots more questions that we didn't get to, but we greatly appreciate your time today.

Kara Mauceri:
I would just like to remind everyone that we will be hosting more of these Masters of Leadership series. The next speaker will be the U.S. Department of Labor Secretary, Eugene Scalia on Monday, May 11. He will be followed by the former governor, Chris Christie, on May 22nd. Registration is open on our website, which is nvtc.org. We hope to see you for another virtual event. In the meantime, as we conclude all of our virtual events these days, please stay safe and stay healthy. We wish you all the best. Thank you.