Hon. Jozef Síkela, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic visited San Francisco accompanied by 45 companies and their 62 representatives from the Czech Republic. They represented several sectors, including software development, cloud technologies, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, aviation, energy, healthcare, and so much more.

Part of the delegation was also H. E. Miloslav Stašek, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United States, Amb. Jaroslav Olša, Jr., Consul General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles, Radek Jakubský, Vice President of the Czech Chamber of Commerce as well as Anna Hight, head of San Francisco´s CzechInvest office.

US-Czech business forum was held at San Francisco, Silicon Valley´s Plug and Play hosted the matchmaking of IT companies, and the minister´s delegation met with the leading Bay Area companies, such as Intel, Honeywell, Onsemi to name only a few. Ministr Síkela also met with the researchers at Stanford University´s Hoover Institution, where the topic of discussion was energy security in Europe and the Czech Republic.

It was the very first visit of the Czech Minister accompanied by the trade delegation which visited the US West Coast since the establishment of the Czech Republic. It shows not only that the trade exchange between the Czech Republic and the United States is significantly expanding, but also how important are the direct links with California, the 5^th largest economy in the world, and the whole US West Coast. The value of US-Czech mutual trade turnover is now six times higher than in 2000, reaching $12.2 billion last year, and California alone imported the same amount of Czech products as the whole of Canada, or a third more than Brazil. What is more, the United States is the top export destination for Czech businesses outside the EU.