Thank you.
Thanks to both of you for being here.
I want to follow up on a couple of comments that were made. I'll start with Mr. Hodgson.
You talk about incenting the trade commissioners and the work they do, and evaluating negotiating skills and interpersonal skills. The challenge that I've seen in this—and I've had years, even before this committee, in international trade—is that the trade commissioners themselves have a two- to three-year term in a given location before they're moved on to their next assignment. They develop relationships during that period of time; then they transition to a new place, and it starts all over again. Perhaps it takes them a year just to get settled, and then, in the last six months of their term, they're already looking ahead to making transitions for their families, so they're really there, fully present and connected, for about a year and a half.
If you're going to incent these individuals to build the kinds of relationships you're talking about and develop these interpersonal skills and that sort of thing, how do we transfer that knowledge? How do you transfer the value of a relationship from one trade commissioner to the next when it's very, very personal?