CEO Steve Mollenkopf said TPP was not perfect but would help Qualcomm protect its intellectual property, encryption and digital data flows to markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Few cities stand to benefit as much as San Diego,” he told 400 fellow employees and guests in cavernous Qualcomm Hall at the firm’s Sorrento Valley headquarters. “More than 97 percent of the region’s exports … are sold in TPP markets that are collectively worth more than $22 billion.”
Mollenkopf, who said the majority of Qualcomm’s revenues are generated outside U.S. borders, declared that rising exports via TPP could boost wages affecting 150,000 high-wage jobs in the region’s manufacturing and innovation sectors.
“San Diego is the third-most patent-intensive region in the world.” he said. “It’s amazing actually. [TPP would] enhance opportunities overseas for Americans’ goods, services and technology — and a level playing field abroad for companies like Qualcomm.”
He ticked off TPP’s benefits to his high-tech company, such as increased penalties for trade-secret theft and “the free flow of data across borders at a time when many countries are restricting the movement of information within and across their borders.”
TPP would foster more cloud computing and bar governments from requiring that software source code be divulged as a condition for market access, he said.
“The TPP prohibits restrictions on the import, use and sale of commercial cryptographic goods — a new requirement never before included in a trade deal.”
And it would help Qualcomm work on 5G wireless technology as it expands into automated health care, drones and robotics, Mollenkopf said.
“While no trade agreement is perfect, the provisions of importance to Qualcomm in the areas of IP, encryption, digital data flows and standards would not be achieved without TPP,” he said before yielding the lectern to U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
“We need this agreement to enhance and expand … and grow across the Asia-Pacific region. I firmly believe that TPP agreement is good for Qualcomm, and it’s good for San Diego.”
