Gary Shapiro is the voice of the tech industry. The president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association is the leader of the trade group that puts on CES, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. I spoke with him about his agenda for the incoming Donald Trump presidency, and Shapiro explained that he’s approaching the policy discussion as an opportunity for innovative thinking.
CES has an estimated 165,000 attendees this week, looking at 3,800 exhibitors spread across 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space. It’s a diverse group, with 25 categories of companies from virtual reality vendors to car makers. But Shapiro said he hopes that Trump will follow through on his campaign promise of investing in infrastructure to make America great again. He also hopes for lower corporate taxes, but worries about Trump’s previous statements on trade.
I met Shapiro at the CES Unveiled event this week. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
VentureBeat: What’s your take after absorbing all the numbers from CES?
Gary Shapiro: What’s changed since we last spoke, we now exceed 2.6 million square feet of exhibit space. Almost 4,000 companies exhibiting. We’ll have more than 165,000 people, or so, although we don’t know exactly how many until the show is over. The innovation here is amazing. Just walking around this hallway here at CSML, I’m seeing products I’ve never seen before. I just saw a company with a portable smell detector, which will have so many benefits in so many different ways.
The French presence alone is extraordinarily large. They have more than 200 exhibitors. Pretty likely the next French president will be here.
VB: It sounds like they read your book.
Shapiro: I was pretty critical of France in the book, because they’re so restrictive. Even this week, they have a new policy in place. If you have more than 50 employees, you can’t send your employees emails after hours. That’s very anti-innovation. On the other hand, they’re encouraging innovation in different ways. We’ll see.
VB: What are your thoughts on the incoming presidential administration so far? Are there any policy themes you see being important?
Shapiro: The message those of us that play in Washington got is that people want change. We’re the innovation and technology industry. We have to be ready for change. He’s been duly elected.
What we’re hopeful about is some of the things we’d like to see changed. We’d like to see the two parties agree on an infrastructure bill. We’d like to see reasonable corporate tax rates. Regulation is important to encourage social goods, but the costs have to be weighed against the benefits. We’re looking at those positives.
We have some concern in the trade area, because we’re a global industry. No one country makes everything. We rely on free trade. We also rely on skilled immigration. We’re hoping that with all the talk about immigration in a negative…