By Liz Hyman
Florida Governor Charlie Crist, along with members of Florida’s Chamber of Commerce, met the CEA “America Wins with Trade” bus as it rolled into Tallahassee. Governor Crist, just back from a successful state economic development trip to Europe, which generated nearly $75 million in trade and investment for the state of Florida, talked about the importance of trade and why every Floridian benefits from global economic engagement and opportunity.

Pictured from left to right: Director of the Florida Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, Dale Brill; …

The International CES® Innovations Design and Engineering Awards program began 34 years ago and has grown into one of the leading design and engineering awards programs in the consumer electronics industry.

Week 2 of the America Wins With Trade grassroots tour kicked off in Florida with a Monday morning event at the Port of Miami.

While Charleston South Carolina is best known for its beautiful architecture, historic sites and down-home Southern charm, I got to see another side of this over 400 year-old city, and one that was all business.

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By Tara Dunion
Natali del Conte is the host of CNET TV’s Loaded news show. With the recent CBS purchase of CNET, she’s also been a voice of technology on The Early Show as well as other news programs.
Prior to CNET, she wrote, produced, and hosted a show called TeXtra on the Podshow network.
Natali is a recent transplant to NYC, from the Bay Area, and is a well known blogger and online personality.
Natali, thanks for joining us today on the CEA blog. We are glad to have the opportunity to …

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By Gary Shapiro
On Thursday afternoon the CEA “America Wins With Trade” bus pulled into the Charlottesville, Virginia, headquarters of Crutchfield, one of the nation’s most pioneering consumer electronics retailers.  Founder Bill Crutchfield and many of his employees welcomed us warmly and enthusiastically.
The county supervisor and executive and broadcast media toured the amazing and legendary warehouse full of a variety of our industry’s products.  I was especially enchanted with their new popcorn machine which is used to transform cornstarch into packing material (which is not only totally biodegradable but also edible). …

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By Tara Dunion
Jason Calacanis is the CEO of Mahalo.com, a human powered search engine. Previously, he co-founded Weblogs Inc. and served as its CEO and before that he was the General Manager of Netscape and the editor and CEO of Silicon Alley Reporter magazine.
I recently had the opportunity to interview him about his new approach to conversing with the online technology community.
You recently announced your “retirement” from blogging. Is it true that you plan to continue the dialogue via a targeted email distro list?
Yes, I’ve started an email list …

By Jason Oxman
CEA took its free trade campaign to Capitol Hill today for a rally featuring an impressive lineup of speakers and a huge crowd of supporters.  Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez led off the morning’s program, urging Congress to pass pending trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.  Secretary Gutierrez pointed out that in the nearly two years that the Colombia free trade agreement has been languishing in Congress, other nations of the world have negotiated hundreds of free trade agreements with each other, leaving the U.S. behind …

By Jason Oxman
Wednesday afternoon on the “America Wins With Trade” tour brought us to the Maryland headquarters of iBiquity Digital, where President and CEO Bob Struble welcomed the trade bus and CEA, together with a large group of iBiquity employees. The consumer electronics industry employs nearly 300,000 people in Maryland thanks to free trade, and iBiquity’s employees were treated to a business update from their leader regarding the importance of trade to the future of the business.
Why is free trade important to iBiquity? HD Radio technology is increasingly being …

By Jason Oxman
If it’s Wednesday, we must be in Philadelphia. No cheesesteaks on the menu this morning – just a breakfast of trade, jobs and economic growth. This morning we visited the headquarters of NeatReceipts here in Philly. NeatReceipts makes innovative products that intelligently scan business cards, receipts, and other paper and actually read the information on the paper to automatically populate Outlook contacts, expense reports and other computer forms.  It reminds me I need to address the pile of 200 business cards on my desk.
A great event this …