I was recently in the other Washington to promote the Greater Seattle region at the SelectUSA Investment Summit, which is the highest-profile event dedicated to promoting foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States. The Investment Summit plays a vital role in attracting and facilitating business investment and job creation by raising awareness about the wide range of investment opportunities in the United States and enabling necessary direct connections between investors and U.S. economic development organizations (EDOs).
The United States is still the largest recipient of FDI in the world.
FDI activity into and out of Greater Seattle and Washington State is as follows:
Greater Seattle | WA State | |||
Inbound | Outbound | Inbound | Outbound | |
CapEx | $2.88B | $71.21B | $4.17B | $71.98B |
Jobs | 8,011 | 289,444 | 9,654 | 295,361 |
Projects | 112 | 980 | 132 | 1,003 |
The unique aspect of Washington State is that we are home to leading brands such as Amazon, Boeing, Costco, Microsoft, Paccar and Starbucks, which generate significant international economic activity in terms of capex, jobs, and total projects. Over the past 5 years, in fact, Amazon leads the nation in outbound FDI by capex, jobs, and projects created with Microsoft coming in at the #5 spot for total number of projects. The number of outbound jobs Amazon has generated globally is double the size of the #2 spot. For this five-year period, Washington State ranks #2 in the nation for total capex, and #3 for total jobs and projects created with Greater Seattle generating 98% of the state’s outbound projects.
It was an honor to meet the Ambassador of Japan at his residence, Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, Executive Director of SelectUSA, Jasjit Singh, and many other businesses and colleagues in the economic development community.