This was distributed by Governor Bruce Rauner:
From: John DeBlasio, Director for International Trade and Investment
To: Interested Parties
Date: May 4, 2015
Subj: Key Reforms Needed to Strengthen Foreign Direct Investment in Illinois
Bruce Rauner and Evelyn Sang before the Crystal Lake Chamber of Commerce.
In order to obtain an independent assessment of Illinois’ competitiveness, the Governor’s office asked the state’s largest foreign trading partners to share their confidential views on Illinois’ attractiveness for investment from their countries.
Collectively, these nations have invested tens of billions of dollars in factories, warehouses, office buildings, and transportation facilities across America, and employ hundreds of thousands of American workers.
They are in a unique position to compare the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual states with which Illinois must compete.
Every year they make important decisions on where to locate major new facilities and high-paying jobs.
Their comments taken together create a policy roadmap of strategic recommendations that we can use to drive powerful new economic growth and job creation in our state.
Attached are the letters, memos, and priorities the Governor’s Office has received, with names, locations, and specific stories redacted to protect the confidentiality of individual countries.
The letters deserve to be reviewed in detail, but some of their key comments are highlighted below:
- “Top Concern: tax issues-too high, property & corporate, worries about further increases due to financial condition of the state”
- “There are large (and growing) perceptions that infrastructure improvements are not keeping up”
- “Foreign firms place a premium on opportunities to “cluster” – to work with concentrations of talent in their sector”
- “The plethora of universities, research institutions & accelerators headquartered in the region constitute a significant positive – firms and entrepreneurs are drawn here by the world-class innovation taking place”
- “Chicago is attractive to college students – which therefore enhances the quality of the workforce pool”
- “Vast difference in perception between Chicago and downstate Illinois. While the former has plenty of positives, the latter is not seen to be competitive with Indiana, Wisconsin, etc.”
- “Costs in particular linked to Unions are high. It’s a problem, especially with Wisconsin and Indiana as neighbors – if there is a legal dispute with workers….Cook County is known for
- “Right to Work is being used by other states to position them favorably compared to Illinois. This is similar to other labor market regulations and workers compensation, unemployment insurance levels, etc. that put Illinois at a disadvantage compared with other states”
- “The manufacturing workforce is aging and vocational training for the next generation of skilled employees is lacking”
- “Chicago is one of the most expensive trade show locations in the world. Being an expensive/bureaucratic trade show location often carries over to the state being perceived as a high cost/bureaucratic location for investing”
- “Illinois overseas offices are primarily focused on exports not investment attraction, which is two very different tasks”
- “Many states have modernized their structure by founding Economic Development Corporations tasked specifically with pursuing investors” being anti-boss or pro-employee”
Sad thing is Its ALL TRUE!
This poor Goven’r has his work cut out for him, wish him luck!
Maybe instead of bringing foreign investors here we need to open up American businesses and factories. If businesses won’t then we need cooperatives to start. This is baloney. Everything is globalism and we lose out. And our countries should not be given tax breaks for moving overseas. We need to mind our own business.
Hey Karma: What will the impact of TPP be?
The impact of TPP will be the same as every “free trade” agreement: there will be some winners and some losers. The losers will be more numerous than the winners.
The winners will be
1. Global corporations and the financiers who run them
2. Especially the corporations that make money from Pentagon contracts
3. Consumers: if you like plastic junk that is made in various Asian countries, consider yourself a winner
4. Connected US farmers
The losers will be
1. US middle class as a whole, as they have been losing: witness the stagnant median income since the 1970s relative to US productivity.
2. Especially hurt: unionized workers
3. US democracy: TPP apparently includes secretly negotiated provisions which hold the US government responsible for “unrealized gains” of foreign corporations. If some corporation makes an investment that turns sour, US taxpayers will be on the hook, and the issue will not be argued before the US supreme court, but in front of a world trade org court.
Very smart people, left and right of the center, are in favor of “free trade.”
Pretty much all Republican presidential candidates, but also such left wing fundamentalists as Paul Krugman are in favor of free trade.
What is missing from the debate is the fact that China and other Asian countries have in place mercantilist export-driven trade policies supported by the state, designed to advance their economies at the expense of the US.