White House Aims to Bring in $1 Trillion of Foreign Investment

WASHINGTON – Searching for ways to boost job creation at home, the Obama administration is trying to focus the machinery of the federal government on drumming up foreign investment in the U.S.

The White House is considering a plan aimed at attracting at least $1 trillion of new investment from abroad over the next five years, according to people familiar with the matter cited by The Wall Street Journal Monday.

But that target could prove difficult to reach, given that the sluggish U.S. economy may hold smaller potential payoffs to global investors, experts said. Compounding this are some U.S. policies outsiders deem unfair, from antitrust rules to the federal government's "Buy American" programs.

The administration is trying to change the sentiment with a new effort to encourage foreign investors to take a second look at the U.S. market.

The $1 trillion investment initiative is one of several recommendations that will be formally made Tuesday by the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a board of outside advisers to the administration led by General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeff Immelt. A target of $1 trillion over five years would represent a 15 percent increase over the $174 billion average of the past decade, but it would still be below the peak level before the financial crisis.

New foreign direct investment in the U.S. plunged to $135 billion in 2009 from $328 billion in 2008, when the financial crisis struck, according to Commerce Department data.

"This still is the world's biggest economy. It still is an attractive place to do business," Immelt said at a recent forum at the State Department to hear from executives of companies based outside the U.S. "There's no reason why we shouldn't be a lot more aggressive and a lot more competitive and a lot more welcoming, and a lot hungrier, quite honestly, as a country."

The push for more foreign investment has been ramping up for months. The State Department is directing its economic staff in embassies around the world, long focused on helping American companies win export business, to help find companies interested in putting money into the U.S.

To read more on this story, see The Wall St. Journal article here.