Foreign firms: have you considered America?

A report from the basement of the SelectUSA Investment Summit

“The united states ranks first in the Kearney Global FDI Confidence Index,” reads a 20-foot-tall banner hanging outside the Potomac ballroom of the Gaylord convention centre at National Harbour, Maryland. “This is the 14th year in a row!” Another boasted that America has the largest number of quantum startups; a third that America has the highest levels of venture-capital investment in the world. “That’s serious fuel for innovation!” it adds. The banners hint at how weird the 2026 SelectUSA Investment Summit was. Then Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, took to the stage to explain that America has lots of consumers and deep capital markets. Among those listening, from the VIP section, sat the delegations from Burkina Faso and Panama.

All this raised more questions than it answered: what business people, anywhere, do not know that America—the world’s biggest economy—is dynamic, innovative and awash with capital? Are they learning this, for the first time, at the Gaylord? And why is America putting on a show to woo foreign investment, in part, from nations with economies smaller than four-fifths of its states?

The conflab made more sense in the cavernous exhibition hall below, where 49 states plus Washington, DC, along with territories, cities and local-government officials—many manning booths the size of houses—were swapping business cards with the foreign business people. The purpose of the summit is only clear when you zoom in a little bit: TSMC, the giant Taiwanese semiconductor firm, can broker deals in Washington any time it chooses. But the small Indian manufacturers of advanced robots, who are looking to onshore some of their assembly process to avoid tariffs, might have to ping-pong all over America to understand where best to locate their factory. At SelectUSA they can visit (almost) every state at once.

But where should they go? Many states offered snacks to tempt would-be investors. Your correspondent sampled gummy bears made in Indiana (number one for passthrough highways!); salmon jerky from Alaska (located within nine hours of 90% of the industrialised world, good for shipping!) and sipped Ale-8-One, a citrus ginger soda, from Kentucky (number one for air cargo by landed weight!). The summit was founded in 2013 to encourage reshoring. Despite the snacks, headline FDI inflows are lower as a share of GDP than they were then.■