#345. USA: Open For Business

Posted on August 30, 2011May 28, 2014 | The Agurban

USA: Open For Business

Invest in America, now SelectUSA, is an organization that is part of the International Trade Administration’s U.S. & Foreign Commercial Services at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The organization supports foreign investors as they explore investment opportunities in the United States in every industrial sector. The director of Invest in America, Aaron Brickman, recently contributed his article USA: Open For Business to Global Corporate Xpansion magazine. Below are some excerpts we found particularly interesting from his article.

The United States offers unparalleled business opportunities for commercial success. The facts speak for themselves:

– The United States is the world’s largest economy and has the world’s third-largest population, with a gross domestic product of more than $14 trillion, and a population of more than 310 million people.
– The United States consistently ranks at or near the top of most major indicators for its attractive business and investment climate.
– Sixty of the world’s top 100 universities are located in the United States.
– This academic excellence, couple with a strong intellectual property rights regime, highly rewards research and development (R&D) spending. In this context, it is no surprise that U.S. R&D dominates worldwide R&D spending, accounting for 34% of R&D spending in the world in 2010.

The United States presents almost unparalleled opportunities for companies to grow, both in the U.S. economy and by using the United States as a platform to export their goods and services to other countries’ markets.

Foreign firms have long benefited from an unequivocal U.S. policy of openness to foreign direct investment (FDI). Foreign-owned subsidiaries in the United States are a major force in the American economy. In 2009, FDI in the U.S. supported 5.6 million jobs, accounted for almost $40 billion of the country’s R&D spending, led to $55 billion of reinvested earnings in the U.S. economy, and supported $404 billion in wages and salaries. U.S. affiliates of foreign firms generated $204 billion in exports, approximately 19 percent of the country’s total. The total stock of FDI in the U.S. economy is $2.6 trillion, which is about 16 percent of total U.S. GDP.

For the complete article, visit USA: Open For Business.