31st Annual Automotive Insights Symposium | Welcome Remarks Day One

RICK MATTOON: Good morning, everyone. Really happy to have you here, and we're very happy to start our 31st Annual Automotive Insights Symposium. My name is Rick Mattoon. I'm the Vice President for Regional Analysis and Engagement and the Regional Executive here at the Detroit branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, as you can probably tell from this somewhat scary picture of me that is being shown right now.

It's really my pleasure to welcome you to this event. This has really become a marquee opportunity for the bank to understand the automotive industry, and it's something that is incredibly important to our district. Really, it's been under the leadership of our policy advisor, Kristin Dziczek.

This event has really morphed into one in which we really touch on the most important issues facing the industry, suppliers, auto communities, and auto workers. And we're extremely proud of where this event has come. And it's an incredibly important opportunity for us to be able to interact with the experts who are here in this room that can give us so many insights that are so important in the work that we do here at the Federal Reserve.

Today's two-day program continues the tradition of excellence, really, in this program. This morning, we're going to spend most of the time talking about where the industry is right now and some of the emerging issues, opportunities, and challenges. Kristin's going to start us off with our usual keen insights on how she sees issues facing the industry. And that's going to be followed by an expert panel led by my colleague Martin Lavelle, which will dive a little bit deeper into some of the industry trends that we're seeing, some of the challenges that may be emerging in 2025, and sort of some of the pivots that the industry is having to make in the current environment.

In the afternoon, we have two blockbuster panels scheduled. The first is going to talk about something that is top of mind for everyone in this room, the changing regulatory environment and policy environment that we're currently seeing at the national level. And I'm sure we're going to get a lot of interesting opinions, ideas, thoughts about what the opportunities are there, what the challenges are, how the industry is responding to these various things.

Obviously, one of the things that Kristin has always talked to me about is one of the challenges is when you have changing policy environment. In an industry that's extremely capital intensive, it's hard to make pivots really easily. You make long-run plans, and then you have policies change. And so adaptability is becoming really sort of a hallmark of the industry and something that we certainly want to understand.

Our second panel is going to focus on the topic of automation. Clearly, again, another topic that's top of mind. And Kristen Broady, one of my colleagues at the Fed, has done a significant amount of work in the area of automation. And she's going to talk to us about what we see with the panels in terms of how this impacts workers, how this impacts the potential for how production will occur in the future, and a lot of other very interesting things.

Finally, I really want to take this moment to recognize a whole host of people, many of whom work behind the scenes at bringing off this spectacular event. We are very fortunate at the Fed to have a absolutely fantastic events team, a fantastic production team, and people who work dedicated long hours many, many days before this event occurred to make sure that it comes off at such a high level and in such a seamless fashion. And we're extremely lucky to have those.
 
We also have a public affairs team that has done everything from promote this event to being working with the media, to being able to be, again, a real partner in us and making sure that we disseminate the knowledge that's coming out of this conference as broadly as possible. So we're extremely lucky to have them.

We also will have-- our hospitality team will also ensure that you are well fed while you're here. And tonight I hope you will stick around. We have an absolutely terrific reception, and hopefully you're going to be able to spend some time interacting with people, chatting about what you learned during the day. And so I think that's also something to look forward to.

Finally, I would be completely remiss if I didn't single out Kristin Dziczek for her role in this particular program. So I will always consider myself lucky over my career that I've had the opportunity to work with Kristin, who has taught me more about the auto industry in the three years since she's been here than probably I had known in my entire lifetime.

She has keen insights. She has wonderful connections within the auto industry. She's an amazing asset to us at the Fed and I know somebody that everybody in this room also has had a lot of interaction with, and you certainly know the caliber of the work she does. So, please, a round of applause for Kristin.

[APPLAUSE]

OK, now, before I bring Kristin up and give her a chance to recover from being embarrassed by that, we're going to show you a brief video. And part of this is a little bit of a commercial. It's partially to explain to many of you exactly what the Federal Reserve does and what we do and so you can have a sense of sort of what our mission is, what our goals are. And so we're going to show that. And then following that, we'll have Kristin come up and kick off our program with her presentation on where she sees the industry at this point.

So again, thank you very much for joining you. We're thrilled to all have you here. If we can do anything while you're here, please come up and talk to anybody on staff. We'll be happy to help you out. So cue the exciting video.