President Obama championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a way to keep American businesses humming and promote global peace, before a receptive audience of corporate leaders and local economic development officials gathered in Washington on Monday for the Obama administration’s “Select USA” summit.
“Never before have we had such high-standard free trade agreements that level the playing field,” Obama said. When the Trans-Pacific Partnership is complete, it “will do even more to lower the cost of exporting, eliminating taxes and custom duties and raising intellectual property standards that protect data and ideas and jobs,” he said.
Obama created Select USA in 2011 to promote direct foreign investment in the United States. The summits are designed to connect international business representatives with American businesses and municipal officials to encourage them to partner with U.S. companies and set up shop in American cities and towns.
“These partnerships are the key to success for all of us,” Obama said in brief remarks to attendees.
“It’s also about building relationships across borders,” Obama added, noting that the mingling of foreign and U.S. businesses bring people together and bridge national divides.
“At a time when there is strong push back in a lot of corners of the world against this process of globalization… it is something that can help us advance all of our countries at the same time,” Obama said. “The ability for us to trade and do business and to integrate our companies… promises prosperity and reductions in poverty and ultimately less likelihood of war and violence and conflict.”
“It’s something that we have to nurture and to value,” he said. “The world is smaller than it used to be because of innovation, because of technology, because of global markets, and that is something that can work for everyone if we do it right.”
