Investing in US is ‘best business decision’: Obama

Washington, June 21 (IANS) US President Barack Obama said on Monday that investing in the US is the "best business decision" possible because this is a country of "making and tinkering, and entrepreneurship and risk-taking, and of innovation and invention".

"Investing in the United States is the best business decision you can make," he told more than 2,000 business owners and executives meeting at the Washington Hilton for the SelectUSA Investment Summit.

Obama noted that the US is responsible for one-quarter of global investment in research and development, and that no other country receives more direct foreign investment, EFE news agency reported.

Energy costs are among the lowest, and "no country has as many top universities, and no country invests more in research and development than we do," Obama said.

He acknowledged, however, that advances in technology and the process of globalisation are legitimate concerns for some workers.

But the key to raising global working standards, he said, is to go forward with international trade pacts, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.

Obama was touching on a subject that candidates have treated negatively in the current presidential campaign, with Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton both expressing their opposition to the TPP on grounds that it will send jobs overseas.

In the three years the SelectUSA event has been held, it has attracted some $10 billion in investments in more than 30 states.

The US government revealed on Monday new figures of direct foreign investment in the US, which reached a total of $348 billion in 2015, more than double the $170 billion in 2014.

Currently, direct foreign investments, worth an accumulated $2.9 billion, generate some 6.1 million jobs in the US.