Obama: America’s ‘Been A Little Bit Lazy’

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obama3President Obama said this weekend that the United States has gotten a little “lazy” about attracting foreign investment, and needs to be more aggressive about attracting overseas dollars.

Obama made the comment while meeting with CEOs during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit; one participant asked the president what China might consider as impediments to investment in the United States.

The U.S. is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world, Obama said, “but we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades.”

“We’ve kind of taken for granted (that), well, people will want to come here, and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America,” Obama said.

Obama said he has assigned federal officials to work with state and local governments to help attract foreign investors.

The full exchange:

QUESTION: I think one related question, looking at the world from the Chinese side, is what they would characterize as impediments to investment in the United States. And so that discussion I’m sure will be part of whatever dialogue you have. And so how are you thinking about that?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, this is an issue, generally. I think it’s important to remember that the United States is still the largest recipient of foreign investment in the world. And there are a lot of things that make foreign investors see the U.S. as a great opportunity — our stability, our openness, our innovative free market culture.

But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America. And so one of things that my administration has done is set up something called SelectUSA that organizes all the government agencies to work with state and local governments where they’re seeking assistance from us, to go out there and make it easier for foreign investors to build a plant in the United States and put outstanding U.S. workers back to work in the United States of America.

And we think that we can do much better than we’re doing right now. Because of our federalist system, sometimes a foreign investor comes in and they’ve got to navigate not only federal rules, but they’ve also got to navigate state and local governments that may have their own sets of interests. Being able to create if not a one-stop shop, then at least no more than a couple of stops for people to be able to come into the United States and make investments, that’s something that we want to encourage.

{The Oval/Matzav.com Newscenter}


4 COMMENTS

  1. dumb head keep the government out of our life then foreign investors mite wanna do investments here in the us (and so will us Americans)

  2. he is a mistake. Get him out, he does not know what to do and he is talking like he does. Hes terrible. He’s not what a leader of the US should be.

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