A former ambulance driver was whizzing me through the rainy streets of Shanghai to meet an eight-car motorcade and—hopefully—U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. She’d been a hard person to wrangle during her three-day diplomatic trip to China, and I had been given the smallest of windows for a face-to-face interview: just 15 minutes in the back of her vehicle, en route to an engagement.
The trip had been a whirlwind: Earlier Wednesday morning, I had seen the 52-year-old cabinet member take a ballroom stage to encourage a hundred women business leaders to never give up on their passions. After that, she squeezed in a meeting with the Shanghai party secretary to discuss her desire to make China more stable and predictable for U.S. businesses. Later, it was off for a chat with New York University students studying in Shanghai, a tour through Disneyland Shanghai, a press conference at Boeing’s Shanghai maintenance center and then, finally, a long flight back to Washington.
In between two of those meetings, I was ushered into a small black van, where Secretary Raimondo, wearing a dark green suit, looked far more refreshed than I felt. “It’s been a productive visit,” she told me seeming both relaxed and energetic. “But actions speak louder than words.”
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