Remarks · Administration
Helberg at the second Pax Silica summit: ten new signatories and a program named Pax Pass.
The coalition reaches twenty-four members in six months, arrives in the Western Hemisphere, and announces Pax Pass — a trusted-shipment platform launching through Panama.
We will launch Pax Pass, an ambitious new platform that has the potential to transform how trusted partners move the critical goods that power the AI economy. By combining cargo verification, AI-powered risk assessment, and pre-approved expedited processing for trusted shipments, Pax Pass will reduce friction, strengthen supply-chain resilience, and accelerate trusted trade. To support this effort, the Department of State is working with Congress to commit $50 million in foreign assistance funding dedicated to the development and deployment of Pax Pass.
The count is the headline. Ten new signatories in a single summit — Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama among them, the framework's first members in the Western Hemisphere — put State's tally at twenty-four in six months, with Italy signing as the twenty-fifth five weeks later. The coalition is no longer an Indo-Pacific story.
Pax Pass is the more consequential line. A declaration that confers no benefits binds no one. A platform promising trusted partners faster, cleaner passage for the goods that power the AI economy would convert membership into something worth keeping. The phrasing is careful — the Department is working with Congress to commit the funds — and the sequence is deliberate: build the benefit, and with it a coalition whose standards can begin to carry consequences.