Recently confirmed U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson gave his first major policy speech at the U.S. Chamber on December 15. Rolling out his agency’s motto, “Build It Here, Sell It Everywhere,” Bryson, the former CEO of California utility Edison International for 18 years, said that his agency’s top priorities are to support advanced manufacturing, increase U.S. exports, and attract foreign direct investment to the United States.

After his speech, Bryson answered our questions about China, U.S. manufacturing, travel and tourism, infrastructure, and the Internet. His responses are edited for clarity and length.

Q) During your speech, you stated that China must follow through on its trade and investment commitments, and anything short of that is unacceptable. What happens if we don’t see results from China?

A) I was with the president during key bilateral meetings with China on the last day of the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] meetings. He was very clear that this is a critical partnership beneficial to both countries. The president set out with great clarity that there needs to be a much stronger balance in the trade relationship that exists now. You have a China that, through non-tariff barriers and with great skill, has not become an open economy. It needs to become an open economy with opportunities for our businesses.

I was just with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk in China for the JCCT [U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade] negotiations, and in that case we did win some key commitments from the Chinese. One was a real commitment on intellectual property in which the vice premiere personally agreed to see to it that intellectual property protections exist not only at the federal level but also at the provincial level. That’s a big step forward.

We made it very clear that we can’t move forward without the Chinese moving to an economy that is less exclusively export-oriented. They need to move to a domestic economy that itself is a consumer economy and gives opportunities to U.S. exporters around the world.

Q) What are the best opportunities in China for U.S. firms?

A) There have been some markets that have been good for U.S.  business. They tend to be in the food and beverage areas. Right now, China is fundamentally cutting out the high tech companies. Advanced technology products of all sorts are not on the eligible buy list for China.

Q) President Obama recently named you co-chair of the White House’s Office of Manufacturing Policy. How is this initiative different from past federal government initiatives to bolster U.S. manufacturing?

A) A very large number of U.S. federal government departments have some element of manufacturing, but they have not been tightly brought together. Further, the U.S. federal government [to date] has not put a big emphasis on meaningful support for manufacturing. It’s been a light touch, not much engagement from the federal government. My principal job will be reaching out individually and to clusters of manufacturers and also working across all the federal departments [to coordinate a manufacturing policy]. That’s very different.

Q) Tourism is an important U.S. industry, yet business and leisure travelers from key markets such as Brazil and China can experience incredible delays in the visa application process that deter them from coming to the United States. What is the Commerce Department doing to improve this situation?

A) We’re in the course of putting something like 50 additional visa officers in China. This tourism point is really important, and we need to get the visa end of this just right. And frankly, we need to do a lot more promoting of U.S. tourist attractions. As you know, tourism is an export. When people from the countries you just named don’t come to the United States, were lose jobs in restaurants, hotels, and amusement parks.

Q) What must the United States do to ensure that our infrastructure enables trade and business competitiveness?

A) The president made a big commitment to infrastructure in his jobs initiative. As a business leader in Los Angeles, I was, over a long stretch of time, involved in working with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. They were becoming the largest ports in the Unites States because of the flow of goods coming from Asia and Asian Pacific countries, but they couldn’t move the goods because of bottlenecks. In China, if they need infrastructure, boom, it’s done. We’ve got to do better. Infrastructure is the place to start in getting this economy working.

Q) Beginning in January, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will allow the unlimited introduction of new Web domain names. Businesses are concerned that this could result in costly defensive registrations, brand confusion and dilution, fraud, identity theft, data breaches, and other cyber crimes. What are your thoughts?

A) We’re going to closely monitor the execution of this program. At Edison, almost every time we created a new initiative, a new subsidiary and created our competitive power generation business around the word, we had to buy the Edison name, which somebody had already put up a few bucks to buy. We have to see to it that [ICANN] does it well. The Commerce Department has the lead position with respect to that.