We're joining a Foreign Direct Investment initiative

The Global Commerce Council of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce invited us today to participate in the creation of a metropolitan Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Plan. Needless to say, we gladly accepted. The FDI is a joint nationwide effort by Brookings Institution (Brookings) and JPMorgan Chase to attract foreign investment to U.S. metros. Metro Atlanta is one of only six U.S. metros to be invited to participate in the project. The FDI is actually the second phase of a Brookings initiative to strengthen the national economy by strengthening regional economies. We were invited to participate in the first phase, also. In that phase, we worked with the Chamber and the region’s business community and economic development organizations to create the Atlanta Metro Export Plan (MEP). The MEP has been a two-year project that is entering its final stages. The goal of the MEP is to strengthen metro economies by increasing exports. This is especially important for metro Atlanta because the region’s recovery from the recent economic downturn has lagged behind the nation’s recovery and that of other U.S. metros. The goal of the MEP is to help businesses throughout the 29-country metro area, especially the small to medium-sized companies that make up the overwhelming majority of the region’s economic landscape, aware of the many existing resources that will help them find new markets in the global economy. The MEP will be published at a critical time. By the end of 2018, 83 percent of world consumers will live outside of the United States. Now it’s on to the FDI. We’ll be on the Steering Committee and also on one or more of the Committee’s smaller groups, probably one involving media relations. In these roles we’ll be visiting and interviewing selected FDI companies across the region. These will be in the greenfield space, a type of foreign direct investment in which a parent company starts a new venture by constructing new operational facilities from the ground up, and in mergers and acquisitions. Exciting times! We wouldn’t have it any other way.