Politics & Power Quote by Chris Chocola

A politician doesn’t open with “Madam Speaker” to share a memoir detail; it’s a credential drop aimed straight at the chamber’s trust reflex. Chris Chocola’s sentence is built like a passport stamp: I’ve been out there, I’ve sold things, I know how the world works. In a Congress that loves to posture about “Main Street,” he’s trying to claim the rare subcategory of Main Street that actually deals with “outside the United States” - the part of the economy most lawmakers invoke but rarely inhabit.

The phrasing does a lot of quiet work. “Before being elected” signals that his expertise is earned, not manufactured by the political class. “Manufacturing business” is culturally coded as hard hats, tangible output, and real jobs - a rebuttal to the insinuation that globalization equals abstract finance or coastal elitism. Then comes the key hedge: “a significant percentage.” It’s persuasive without being falsifiable in the moment, suggesting scale and seriousness while avoiding numbers that could be challenged.

The subtext is also defensive. Talking about overseas sales inside a domestic political arena is a tightrope: it can read as patriotic competitiveness or as complicity in globalization’s disruptions. By framing exports (sales outside the U.S.) rather than offshoring (jobs outside the U.S.), he casts international trade as American strength, not surrender.

Contextually, this is the voice of early-2000s Republican economic messaging: pro-trade, pro-business, and eager to present globalization as something disciplined manufacturers can master - if Congress just gets out of the way.