Clinton Touts Power of Foreign Investment to Generate U.S. Jobs
October 07, 2011, 3:01 PM EDTBy Nicole Gaouette
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged the full backing of her agency to foreign businesses seeking to expand and create jobs in the U.S.
Clinton today hosted a meeting of President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in Washington. The event reflected Clinton’s push to shift the focus of the State Department to boosting jobs and investment at home, and opening overseas markets for U.S. businesses.
The jobs meeting took place after the release of better- than-expected September employment figures that buoyed U.S. and European stock markets. Obama is urging Congress to pass his jobs bill, which the administration says would create 1 million jobs. The Senate may vote next week.
“We have a significant but untapped potential for job creation and economic growth that comes with attracting foreign investment to the United States to put Americans to work,” Clinton told executives from Siemens AG, Eastman Kodak Co., and other firms.
Payrolls climbed by 103,000 workers after a revised 57,000 increase the prior month. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for a rise of 60,000. The gain reflected the return to work of 45,000 telecommunications employees. The jobless rate held at 9.1 percent.
R&D Spending
Five percent of Americans work for U.S. affiliates of foreign companies, according to Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman of General Electric and Obama’s Jobs Council. These companies account for 14 percent of all spending on research and development, almost 21 percent of all the exports and pay their employees an average salary of over $77,000, Immelt said at today’s event.
Executives gathered for the hour-long meeting said changes would help raise the level of their investment in the U.S. They urged Clinton and the administration to ease visa requirements, particularly for trainers to come to the U.S. to work with American employees.
They stressed the need to improve U.S. education and worker training, amend the tax code and remove other barriers. Peter Solmssen, who heads the Americas division of Siemens, said the crucial message the executives delivered is the need to rebuild U.S. infrastructure.
“The country ought to do what it needs to do anyway, which is invest in infrastructure,” Solmssen said in an interview. “That was pretty much the unanimous view in the room.”
Clinton said the department is seeking to speed up the processing of business visas.
--With assistance from Rita Nazareth in New York. Editors: Steven Komarow, Justin Blum
To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
