RIAA APPLAUDS RAIMONDO’S CONFIRMATION

The Senate confirmed Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo as the next Secretary of Commerce in an 84-15 vote on Tuesday, and the RIAA couldn’t be happier.

Indeed, the news put RIAA Chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier in an especially voluble mood. “We have no doubt,” he began, “that her executive and leadership experience will serve the Commerce Department well during this critical time for both the U.S. economy and those who are contributing to its recovery, including the recording industry.”

During the confirmation process, Raimondo asserted that the Department of Commerce could and should play a key role in helping the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

“As she articulated during her confirmation hearing: ‘Exports equal growth equals more jobs,’” Glazier continued before breaking out some pertinent stats. “With the music industry contributing $170 billion to the U.S. GDP annually, supporting 2.47 million high-quality, well-paying American jobs and earning $9.1 billion in foreign sales each year through music exports, we could not agree more with the secretary’s clear-eyed vision.

“The RIAA looks forward to working closely with Secretary Raimondo in her new role, which includes oversight of the International Trade Administration and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to help catalyze creators’ contributions to American jobs, wages and growth, and to promote the strong copyright protections critical to ensuring that those contributions continue.”

For the record, Raimondo earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard and went to Yale Law School, while Glazier graduated from Northwestern and attended Vanderbilt Law School. What would we do without Wikipedia?