Secretary Of State Marco Rubio At The Trump Administration's Foundry School Launch

UNDER SECRETARY HELBERG: Every so often, history hands a nation a choice: to drift, or to build. And every so often, it hands that nation a leader who inspires people to reject the drifters and build with boldness and confidence in the future.

One of our guests this morning is the son of Cuban exiles, a man whose family fled a regime that confiscated everything, and who grew up understanding in his bones that freedom and prosperity are not inherited – they're defended, and they're built. That heritage made him clear-eyed, and it gave him something rare in Washington: the memory of what it costs when a country loses its future.

For decades in the United States Senate, he warned us. He warned us that we traded our industrial base for the illusion of cheap abundance. He warned us that supply chains had become weapons pointed at us. And this year in Munich, in a speech that will be studied for a generation, he said what no Secretary of State had dared to say – that deindustrialization was a choice, and that reindustrialization must now be ours. He called on the free world not merely to defend Western civilization but to build a new Western century.

Under President Trump's leadership, he has turned that vision into policy, restoring American economic strength as the foundation of economic power, and reminding the world that the arsenal of democracy was never a metaphor – it was a factory floor. He's a statesman, a patriot, and the driving force behind the most consequential renewal of American economic statecraft since the Second World War.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the 72nd Secretary of State of the United States, Secretary Marco Rubio. (Applause.)

SECRETARY RUBIO: Thank you. Thank you, all of you, first of all, for being here today. Thank you – Jacob Helberg's doing a phenomenal job. Everybody at our department is doing a great job, and I'm very proud of the work the State Department is putting in into these and other initiatives.

One of the things we really wanted to do in our time here, and one of the reasons behind many of the reforms we undertook, is to allow us to have a State Department that could move at the speed of relevance, which is something we used to say all the time. Now it's become almost a cliche, but it really is important – because world affairs are moving so quickly, economic developments are moving so quickly, and so much of that is internationalized, and it involves what we do around the world as well.

And so, I'm very proud of everybody at the Department of State and all the work that they're doing to be a part of this initiative, along with our partners in the other agencies, because this truly is an interagency challenge that we're facing.

What is the challenge that we're here to talk about today? Let me put it to you this way: I think we made a terrible mistake in this country – not – many years ago, under people that were in charge at the time, especially at the end of the Cold War. And that was the idea that the ability to make things no longer mattered. And no matter – it didn't matter any longer where things were made. They were to be made in the most efficient place at the lowest possible cost. That meant more profits for the company, lower costs for the consumers, and that was the way the world would work. There was this fantasy, really, that the whole world would become a free enterprise, democracies, and that everyone would look us.

That ran into reality – the reality that that is not how human events have ever worked, that the nation-state still does matter, nationalism is still real, national borders still matter, and that countries are going to always act in their best interest. But the result of it is that it deindustrialized America. We lost our ability and our capacity to make things, and not just big things – not just the kinds of big machinery and things that we normally identify with industry – but even some of the most basic components that are necessary, that underpin economic life, especially in the 21st century.

And we woke up to the reality just a few years ago that we are suddenly, as a nation, dangerously dependent – dangerously dependent – on other nations for all sorts of things that we need, not simply for our economic vibrancy but, in many cases, for our national security and our very survival as a prosperous nation-state. And so now we are involved in this endeavor across the board to try to reverse those mistakes. And it will be the work of multiple administrations, but it starts here and it starts now with this one that is receiving attention at its highest level.

One way is just the basic ingredients that go into all this, and it's why you've seen such a focus on access to not just critical minerals as raw material but also to the ability to process them. But the other is – has to be the ability to actually make things once again. And we have to understand that re-industrialization, that 21st century industrial activity is going to look different than it did in the 20th century. It's going to involve far more skills. It's going to involve – not just are our workers going to have to be better educated in what they're doing, but in many cases, given the evolution and the rapidly changing dynamics of the modern world, they may have to be retrained multiple times in their career.

One of the crown jewels that have powered American innovation and, ultimately, powered American economic influence and power around the world has been our system of higher education. It has produced extraordinary research; it has produced extraordinary breakthroughs. I think the sad part about it is the number of things we have innovated or created, but then they're made somewhere else. And so, I think in the 21st century, this partnership with higher education is important, and it's important for two reasons.

First of all, why build it when – why build a new wheel when we already have a wheel? We just need to repurpose that wheel to become the place where 21st century American workers go to become empowered with the skills they need to succeed. But I also think it's important for higher education, and we've got some great partners here today that are already part of this initiative, and, of course, we want this partnership to grow to include other schools as well.

But I think it's also important for higher education because, increasingly, young Americans are asking: Is the college degree worth it? Is the college route worth it? Because we have to borrow money or we have to spend money or we have to do all these sorts of things and, in the end, I get a degree, and all that degree does is either a) qualify me to get another degree or b) it may not even really lead to a job necessarily that's different from the one I could have gotten otherwise.

And I think this speaks to that, because it also – in addition to being good for our country – is an opportunity to say to students: If you come here and you go to school and you follow this curriculum, you will leave here not just with a paper credential but with the skills that make you immediately employable in a high-paying job, in a good-paying job with long-term stability. And so this partnership is critical because what I hope it means, what I hope it symbolizes – and not just symbolizes but what I hope it is evidence of – is how government partnering with non-government entities like our higher education system and the private sector, the combination of those three pillars – the private sector that needs the workers and knows what they need from the workers; the higher education system that can equip young Americans with the skills they need to fill those jobs; and government that ensures not just that it's acting as a convening body, but ensures that our national policies reflect these priorities. These three pillars working together drive us towards this outcome that we want, and it's very important.

So, I think today is a great way to kick this off. We have great partners on board already. We hope to attract more. I want to thank all of you for being a part of it. And I – the last thing I want to say about this is that we understand that for this to work, this is not a two-year project. This is not a two-and-a-half-year project. This is a project that will involve sustainment for the long term. Multiple American administrations are going to have to make this a priority, which is why it's so important that you see evidence that, at the highest levels of our government, now and for the future, you have that commitment.

And it's why it's exciting for us to have the Vice President here today to speak about it, because I think the evidence is not just the importance this administration gives it, but our acknowledgement that this is an issue that's going to require long-term and sustained attention. This has to be an endeavor that goes on beyond the next two years. It has to go on for a generation. And I think having the Vice President here today with us is evidence of that commitment.

And so now I want to introduce and welcome to the stage here at the Institute of Peace, a beautiful building that the State Department's using a lot – and we thank you all for coming – the Vice President of the United States of America, JD Vance. (Applause.)

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