In 2010 American exports to Asia exceeded shipments to the Europe for the first time ever. Yesterday, I met U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke who was in Los Angeles to promote President Obama’s  National Export Initiative (NEI), which seeks to double American exports to $2 trillion by 2014.

Speaking at the Asia Pacific Business Outlook conference, Locke said exports now supported 10 million jobs in America, including 700,000 in California. One in three manufacturing jobs and one in five agricultural jobs in the United States were tied directly to exports. In addition, exports were a key driver of economic recovery in the past two years, accounting for nearly half U.S. economic growth since 2009, according to Locke.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and me

In my work at Amritt, my colleagues and I are vigorous supporters of the NEI. In fact the topic of my talk at the same conference was how to increase exports to India five-fold not just two-fold; we believe that this is quite doable.

Secretary Locke, the first Chinese American to hold a cabinet post, is expected to become the next U.S. Ambassador to China  by June of this year.

Takeaway: Asia and India in particular is hugely important to America’s economic engine going forward.

Fellow IIT Alumnus and friend, Dr. “Desh” Deshpande, was just appointed to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.  The secretary said that the Council will support President Obama’s innovation strategy by helping to develop policies that foster entrepreneurship and identifying new ways to take great ideas from the lab to the marketplace to drive economic growth and create jobs.

In America since the Industrial Revolution, basic research in public and private sector research labs has spawned new technologies and inventions that led to new businesses. And those entrepreneurial businesses have been important drivers of job creation. Firms less than five years old have accounted for nearly all net new jobs in America over the last 30 years. Yet, as a share of gross domestic product, American federal investment in the physical sciences and engineering research has dropped by half since 1970.

Readers of this blog, know of my commitment to global innovation and my firm’s support of accelerating innovation by any means necessary. I was tickled to realize that I have personally met several member of the National Council in the last 11 years (see bolded names below).

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is one of the most remarkable individuals I have ever met. He sold one of his early companies for over $2 billion and it eventually was absorbed by Lucent Technologies. I bought shares of his next public company, Sycamore Networks which had a spectacular IPO and great rise before it got caught in the telecom downturn in the early 2000′s .  Desh chairs  a charity that feeds 1.2  million schoolkids everyday in India. He’s been Chair of TiE Global in which role I saw him in my native town of Kanpur India, exhorting entrepreneurs. He is on the board of MIT and I saw him with President Susan Hockfeld on another trip to India. Desh is a member of the Pan IIT Leadership Circle, where he lends his vision to my colleagues.

Innovation in the U.S. today is carried forward not by Americans alone but also by visionary internationals like Dr. Deshpande.

Exploring avenues to boost its stagnant exports, the U.S. is mulling a complete overhaul of its export control policies this year, which should pave the way for sale of more high-technology goods to India and China.

While visiting China last month, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said “We are reviewing the entire list of our export control system as some of the protections and restrictions make very little sense,” raising hopes among Chinese officials for acquisition of some of the latest US technology, blocked by Washington over fears of intellectual property rights.

The U.S. government is loosening controls over commonly available high-tech goods, but will give more protection to the sensitive technologies that are important to U.S. national security, Locke said. “Currently, less than 1 per cent of US exports to China require a license. Of those that do require a license, 98 per cent are approved. Streamlining items on the export control list will cause the license to be issued more quickly,” he was quoted by the official media.

After many months of pressing its case with the Obama administration, the Government of India can expect  good news regarding export control restrictions imposed  on sensitive, dual-use items of high-tech trade and on legitimate government institutions such as the Indian Space Research Organisation. “I expect that there will be some positive announcements to be made before the President’s visit [in November 2010] — hopefully well before [that],” said Robert Blake, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia in Washington this week.

Robert Blake, chief State Department official for India

He also admitted that the U.S. export control regime was “in many cases outdated,” and in the case of India, the U.S. was taking “a particularly close look at the Entities List.” Mr. Blake noted that many entities had already come off the “Entities List” — a list of organizations with which U.S. companies cannot trade or can only trade under restrictions — over the last few years and “now there is a focus on entities like ISRO and the Defense Research and Development Organization.