It's good to be back in Minnesota after accompanying Governor Walz, Agriculture Deputy Commissioner Andrea Vaubel and our Minnesota Trade Office on a successful business development mission to the Netherlands.

Minnesota has a strong trade and investment relationship with the Netherlands. Our total trade in goods with the Netherlands was $908 million in 2024, and the country is Minnesota's 10th largest exports market. Dutch businesses are also a major source of investment in Minnesota: Netherlands-based companies invested $328 million in our state in 2024, and they employ 6,900 Minnesotans.

One of our goals for this trip was to promote more in-bound investment with partners in Eindhoven and Amsterdam. A centerpiece event related to the recently announced expansion of Philips Image Guided Therapy in Plymouth. The Netherlands-based company is investing $31 million in Minnesota and creating 158 new jobs. We were excited to meet with their leadership to celebrate our partnership and learn more about the life-saving medical care that will be facilitated by equipment manufactured in Minnesota.

Commissioner Varilek, center, with Minnesota partners at Philips headquarters.

We met with other major employers while in the Netherlands, including a group of healthtech and advanced manufacturing CEOs Wednesday morning. We also toured Neste Rotterdam, the world's leading sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) producer. The company's experience and expertise will be instructive as Minnesota continues to implement our leading SAF Hub initiative.

Governor Walz, center, and officials at the Brainport Industries Campus in Eindhoven.

Governor Walz had two high-profile opportunities to tell Minnesota's story to important audiences. At the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, he gave a keynote address on the role played by Minnesota and other states in advancing industrial policy to meet international climate goals. At the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam, the governor spoke about how states like ours can engage on areas of global concern, including clean technology and international security.

Cleantech, medtech, advanced manufacturing, agriculture -- DEED is focused on elevating Minnesota as a global leader in these particular sectors so we can grow jobs, support new businesses and tackle the pressing problems facing society. This business development mission gave us a unique opportunity to collaborate directly with our international partners as we pursue our mission of empowering the growth of Minnesota's economy for everyone.

On a more somber note, we also took a moment the day we arrived to visit one of Amsterdam's most sacred places, the "Secret Annex" of a business warehouse where the Jewish teenager Anne Frank and seven other family members and friends lived in hiding to survive two years of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, before she ultimately perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Seeing the marks on the wall where Anne's parents lovingly marked her increasing height over the course of the war -- seeing the pictures of her favorite actors that she had pasted on the walls of her tiny bedroom – these were powerful reminders of a dark time when evil ruled that land, and of the necessity for all of us today to courageously defend the dignity and rights of our fellow humans in the face of new threats as they emerge.

After this powerful visit, and the incredibly warm reception we received from all our Dutch hosts, I left the Netherlands highly optimistic about our potential for even deeper collaboration together in the years ahead.