奥巴马总统在选择美国投资峰会上的讲话

Remarks by the President at SelectUSA Investment Summit
总统在选择美国投资峰会上发表讲话

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C.
沃德曼公园万豪酒店，华盛顿哥伦比亚特区

October 31, 2013
2013年10月31日

Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you very much. Please have a seat.
谢谢。（掌声）非常感谢大家。请就坐。

To my great friend, Penny Pritzker, thank you for the kind words, but more importantly, thank you for your outstanding leadership, for bringing us all together today, and being such a strong voice for America’s workers and America’s businesses.
谢谢我的好友彭妮·普利茨克的溢美之词，但更重要的是，感谢你杰出的领导作用，让我们所有人今天汇聚一堂，并为美国员工和美国企业发出强有力的声音。

I want to acknowledge Acting Deputy Secretary Patrick Gallagher, Undersecretary Francisco Sanchez, and Vinai Thummalapally, and their team at SelectUSA. And I want to especially thank all of you -– state and local officials from across the country, and business leaders from around the world.
我要感谢代理副部长帕特里克·加拉格尔、副部长弗朗西斯科·桑切斯和维奈·图马拉帕利以及他们的选择美国团队。我还要特别感谢在座的各位——全国各地的州和地方官员，以及世界各地的商界领袖。

As President, I have gone all over the world to go to bat for American exports and American workers. I’ve been to many of your countries, and I’ve said that when we do business together, and when we trade and forge new partnerships, it’s good for all of us. I want more American products being sold in your countries, and I want your companies investing more here in the United States of America. Because it advances my top priority as President: creating good-paying American jobs and strengthening and broadening our middle class. There’s nothing more important right now.
作为总统，我出访世界各地为美国出口和美国员工争取机会。我到过你们中许多人的国家，我说过，如果我们一起从事商务活动、当我们进行贸易并缔结新的伙伴关系时，对我们大家都有益。我希望更多的美国产品销往各位的国家，我希望贵国公司更多地到美国投资。因为这能够推进我作为总统的首要任务：即创造薪酬优厚的美国就业机会，并加强和扩大我们的中产阶层。目前没有什么比这更重要的了。

And I’m here because I want your companies to know -- I want companies around the world to know -- that I believe there is no better place in the world to do business than the United States of America. Think about it: Globalization and technology means you can go just about anywhere. But there are a whole lot of reasons you ought to come here.
我在此就是想让你们的公司能够了解——我希望全世界的公司都了解——我相信世界上没有什么地方比美国更适合经商。想想看：全球化和技术意味着你可以到几乎任何地方去。但你们有许多应该来这里的理由。

We’re not just the world’s largest market -- we’re growing. Thanks to the grit and resilience of the American people, we’ve cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis, and over the past three and half years our businesses have created more than 7.5 million jobs. Thanks to tough decisions we’ve made to tackle our long-term challenges, America is becoming more competitive from a business standpoint. We’re reforming a broken health care system, and as a consequence, health care costs are rising at their slowest rate in 50 years. We’ve cut our deficits by more than half since I took office, and they keep going down. We’ve pursued an all-of-the-above energy strategy, and we are producing more traditional energy, more renewable energy than ever before, more natural gas than anyone in the world, and we have cut our carbon pollution in the process.
我们不只是世界上最大的市场——我们还在不断增长。由于美国人民的勇气和坚韧不拔，我们清除了金融危机的余害，在过去三年半里，我们的企业创造了超过750万个就业机会。由于我们为应对长期挑战而做出的艰难决定，从商业角度看美国正变得更具竞争力。我们正在对问题重重的医疗保健体系进行改革，其结果是医疗保健成本上升的速度成为50年来最慢的。自我上任以来，我们已经将赤字削减了一半以上，而且赤字水平还在继续下降。我们已经实行了综合全面的能源战略，我们正在生产更多的传统能源、比以往任何时候都多的可再生能源、比世界上任何国家都多的天然气，而且降低了生产过程中的碳污染。

So while the case for doing business in America has always been strong, we’ve made it even stronger. And of course, you will find no better workers than American workers.
因此，虽然来美国经商的理由向来都很充分，但我们已使这种理由更加充分。当然，你们将发现没有比美国员工更好的员工了。

Our productivity is rising. We have the world’s best universities, its most innovative entrepreneurs. We have its strongest intellectual property protections to go along with a rule of law that matches up with anyone. And thanks in part to a new initiative focused on exports and the new trade agreements that I’ve signed, we sell more products made in America to the rest of the world than ever before.
我们的生产率在不断提高。我们有世界上最好的大学，最具创新力的企业家。我们有全世界最强有力的知识产权保护，以及与其相应的堪比任何人的法治。而且，部分由于一项注重出口的新举措以及我已经签署的新贸易协定，我们向世界各地销售的美国制造的产品比以往任何时候都多。

So as you’ve heard repeatedly today and you will hear undoubtedly after I leave this stage, America is open for business. And businesses have responded. After a decade in which many jobs left the United States to go overseas, now we’re seeing companies starting to bring jobs back because they’re seeing the advantages of being located here. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here in the United States.
因此，正如你们今天已经反复听到的，而且你们在我离开讲台后无疑还会听到，美国对商贸开放。公司企业也作出了回应。在许多就业岗位从美国流失到海外10年之后，我们现在看到公司企业开始纷纷让就业机会回到美国，因为他们看到了在美国开展业务的优势。卡特彼勒公司正在将就业机会从日本带回美国。福特公司正在将就业机会从墨西哥带回美国。在将工厂设在中国等其他国家后，英特尔公司正在美国这里开设最先进的工厂。

And there are a whole range of factors involved. People are looking at lower energy costs here. They’re looking at stability. They’re looking at the increased productivity of our workers. All these things are adding up. And people are saying, why would we want to be outside the world’s largest market when we can get our products made effectively here, and this is a great platform from which we can export all around the world.
这其中涉及各种各样的因素。人们考虑到这里较低的能源成本。他们考虑到稳定性。他们考虑到我们的员工已有所提高的生产率。所有这些因素加在一起，而且人们都在说，当我们在美国就可以高效地制造产品时，为什么我们还想置身于这个世界上最大的市场之外，更何况这里还是我们能将产品出口到世界各地的极好的平台。

And it’s not just companies based in the United States. Honda is betting on America by expanding production operations in Ohio, in Alabama and Indiana. And today, more Hondas are made in America than anyplace else in the world. Samsung is betting on America by revamping their plant in Austin, Texas -- a $4 billion investment. Siemens is betting on America by hiring hundreds of new workers in North Carolina and putting $50 million a year into training its U.S workforce.
这不仅仅包括总部设在美国的公司。本田公司寄希望于美国，在俄亥俄州、阿拉巴马州和印第安纳州扩大生产经营。今天，在美国制造的本田汽车比世界上其他任何地方都多。三星公司也寄希望于美国，并正在改造他们设在得克萨斯州奥斯汀市的工厂——一笔40亿美元的投资。西门子公司同样寄希望于美国，他们在北卡罗来纳州雇用了数百名新员工并每年投入5000万美元来培训美国员工。

And that’s the kind of investment we’ve always welcomed as a nation, but the reason for SelectUSA is we know we can do more. We know we can be better. So two years ago, I acted on a recommendation from the CEOs on my Jobs Council, and we created SelectUSA to encourage more foreign companies to invest and create jobs right here in the United States. And we’ve shown that this works.
这种投资是我国历来都欢迎的，而发起选择美国计划的原因是我们知道我们还能做到更多。我们知道我们能做得更好。因此，两年前，我采纳了总统就业委员会中各位首席执行官的建议，创立了选择美国计划，以鼓励更多的外国公司来美国投资并创造就业机会。我们已表明这行之有效。

As Penny mentioned earlier this morning, with help from SelectUSA, the Austrian company Voestalpine is creating 220 jobs at an auto-parts plant in Cartersville, Georgia. The Canadian company Bombardier is investing more than $600 million to expand its Learjet facility in Wichita, Kansas. ASCO, a Belgian company that makes high-tech aircraft parts, reopened a shuttered factory in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and they’re expected to create 380 good jobs by the end of 2015. And the list goes on.
正如彭妮今早提到的，在选择美国计划的帮助下，奥地利奥钢联公司将在佐治亚州卡特斯维尔市的汽车零件厂创造220个就业机会。加拿大庞巴迪公司正在投资超过6亿美元来扩大其在堪萨斯州威奇托市的李尔喷气机工厂的规模。比利时高科技飞机零件制造商ASCO公司在俄克拉荷马州斯蒂尔沃特市重开了一家被关闭的工厂，预计他们到2015年年底将创造380个待遇优厚的就业机会。这样的例子不胜枚举。

And I want to see even more of these success stories told across this country, which means I want to make sure we are doing everything we can so that companies like yours want to set up shop here in the United States. And for all the U.S. states and cities who are represented here today, we want to provide you with the tools you need to close those deals and create those jobs.
我希望看到在美国各地出现更多这样的成功故事，这意味着我要确保我们正在尽一切努力，让像贵公司那样的企业愿意到美国来开店办厂。对于今天有代表在座的所有美国州和城市，我们要为你们提供达成这些交易并创造就业机会所需的帮助。

So that’s why, today, I’m proud to announce that I’m expanding and enhancing SelectUSA to create the first-ever, fully coordinated U.S. government effort to recruit businesses to invest and create new jobs in the United States. (Applause.) To do that, I’m taking four new steps to bring more good jobs to our shores.
这正是为什么今天我自豪地宣布，我将扩大并加强选择美国计划，推行有史以来首次由美国政府全面协调的吸引企业来美国投资并创造就业机会的努力。（掌声）为此，我将采取四项新措施，将更多好的就业机会带到美国。First, building on the great work that our diplomats and embassies do every day, I’m making attracting foreign investment a formal part of the portfolio for our ambassadors and their teams around the world. I meet with our dedicated embassy staffs wherever I go. All of them are great ambassadors for America, and they’re building bridges and connections every day. Well, I want them doing even more to help foreign companies cross those bridges and come here. And as they take on this expanded economic mission overseas, we’ll make sure that they’ve got the support that they need here at home.
首先，在我们的外交官员和各大使馆每天所做的杰出工作的基础上，我正式将吸引外国投资列入我国驻各国大使及其团队的工作日程。我无论走到哪里都要与我们恪尽职守的使馆工作人员见面。他们都是了不起的美国大使，他们每天都在牵线搭桥，建立联系。我希望他们做更多的工作，帮助外国公司通过这些桥梁和联系到美国来。当他们在海外肩负起这一得到扩展的经济使命时，我们将确保他们在美国国内得到所需的支持。

Which brings me to the second point: Officials at the highest levels, up to and including me, are going to do even more to make the case for investing in America. Now, I already do this everywhere I go around the world, in public and private. I joke with a few American companies that I will deserve at least a gold watch at the end of my tenure from them. (Laughter.) I’ve racked up some pretty good sales. But as a country, we don’t always make our case in a coordinated way that links our teams overseas to the right senior officials in Washington. And we’re going to change that, make our advocacy more efficient, more effective, more connected so that businesses who are making decisions about where to invest are getting timely answers and know that they’re going to have all the help that they need.
这就引出了第二点：最高层官员，包括我在内，都将做出更大的努力说明在美国进行投资的优势。现在，无论我到世界任何地方，在公开和不公开场合我都已经在这么做。我对几家美国公司开玩笑说，我在任期结束时至少应该得到一块金表。（笑声）我已经为美国做了几次成功的推销。但作为一个国家，我们并不是总能将我们在海外的团队与我们在华盛顿对口的高级官员连通，以协同的方式来说明我们的优势。我们将改变这种状况，使我们的倡导工作更有效力、更具效率、更加连贯，以使正要决定在哪里投资的企业能及时得到答复，知道他们将会得到他们所需的一切帮助。

Number three: We’ll make sure that for the first time, companies who want to do business in America have a single point of contact at the federal level to cut through red tape. We’re going to help you navigate national, state, local rules and regulations so that you can invest faster, open facilities faster, create jobs faster.
第三：我们将确保，希望来美国做生意的公司将第一次在联邦政府一级只需找一个联系部门，以减少繁文缛节。我们将帮助你们熟悉[美国]国家、州和地方的法律法规，以便你们能更快地投资、办厂、创造就业机会。

And finally, we’ll help states, cities, regions across America up their game by giving them more tools they need to compete, from the latest research and analysis to events that link them directly with potential investors. This is a big country, and for a lot of foreign investors, it may be sometimes hard to navigate and figure out what exactly is going to fit the needs of your company. Well, we can help you do that, and we can help make sure that state and local governments and regional offices, they’re best-equipped to make their case, and we can get a good fit that’s good for the company and good for those communities.
最后，我们将帮助美国各州、城市和地区在竞争中胜出，为它们提供竞争所需的工具，从最新的研究和分析到安排将它们直接与潜在投资者连通的活动。美国是一个大国，对很多外国投资者而言，有时候要了解并确定究竟什么符合你们公司的需求可能很困难。我们可以帮助你们做这项工作，我们可以帮助确保各州和地方政府及地区办事处拥有最好的吸引投资的工具，而且我们可以介绍合适的项目，使公司和社区均能受益。

So a new focus at our embassies on attracting investment. More outreach from Washington. Coordinated advocacy to bring more jobs here. New ways to cut through red tape. And new tools for state and local leaders. That’s what an expanded SelectUSA will mean for businesses and for our partners in U.S. states and cities. And ultimately, I believe that will translate into more good middle-class jobs for America, my number-one priority.
因此，我们各大使馆的一个新的工作重点是吸引投资。华盛顿将展开更多的外展联络。通过协调倡导将更多就业机会带到美国。通过新的方式打破繁文缛节。以及为州和地方领导人提供新的工具。这就是扩大选择美国计划对美国各州和城市的公司企业及我们的合作伙伴的意义。最终，我相信这将转变为美国中产阶层的更多待遇优厚的就业机会，而这是我的首要任务。

I will be asking Congress to do its part. A lot of this is coordination. It’s not necessary to spend a lot of money, it’s important for us to do what we do more wisely. But making America even more attractive to investment should be something that everybody can agree on, Democrats and Republicans. We’ve got to work together to get that done.
我将要求国会尽自己的责任。其中很多是协调工作。这并不需要花很多钱，重要的是我们能更合理地做好工作。使美国成为更具吸引力的投资地应该是每个人都认同的目标，民主党人和共和党人都应该认同。我们必须共同努力实现这一目标。

At the macro level, that means getting beyond gridlock and some of the manufactured crises that we’ve seen come out of Washington, because I assume if you ask any CEO here if shutting down the government makes them more confident about wanting to bring jobs to America the answer will probably be no. The notion of not paying our bills on time doesn’t inspire confidence. So it’s time for Congress to focus on what the American people are focused on and what I’m focused on, which is creating good jobs that pay good wages and creating a good environment for investment.
在宏观层面上，这意味着打破僵局以及我们在华盛顿看到的一些人为制造的危机，因为我设想，如果你们问一问在座的任何一位首席执行官，关闭政府是否让他们对将就业机会带到美国更有信心，答案很可能是否定的。不按时偿还债务的说法并不能激发信心。因此，目前国会应该重点关注美国人民所关注的以及我所关注的事务，那就是创造薪酬高的良好就业机会及创造良好的投资环境。

We do need to fully fund the SelectUSA program so that more middle-class folks have a chance to earn a decent living. We need to make sure that we are resourcing the efforts to make sure that our workers can earn the skills that they need to compete in the global economy. We’ve got -- one of the crown jewels of our education system is our community college system. Not everybody is going to be training at MIT or Stanford, but these community colleges mean that we can partner with businesses, help defray some of the training costs, help design with businesses what exactly they’re going to need in terms of people getting hired. And we’ve got the resources to do it. We know how to do it. But we’ve got to make sure Congress is supportive of that.
我们确实需要向选择美国计划提供充足的资金，以使更多的中产阶层民众有机会过上相当好的生活。我们必须确保我们在为这些努力提供资源，确保我们的员工能够获得参与全球经济竞争所需的技能。我们拥有——我们教育体系最可贵的一个方面是我们的社区学院体系。并非每个人都会去麻省理工学院或斯坦福大学接受教育，而这些社区学院意味着我们可以与企业结成伙伴关系，帮助支付其中一些培训费用，帮助企业设想他们究竟需要雇用什么样的人才。

We’ve got to fix a broken immigration system so that we are welcoming more talented workers and entrepreneurs from around the world, and so if companies are coming here to locate and they’ve got a key individual that they need to bring over to make sure that the company is doing what it needs to do, that it’s not a tangle of red tape. And the good news is we know we’ve got bipartisan support for immigration reform, we just have to make sure we get it done this year.
我们有做此项工作的资源。我们知道如何去做。但我们必须确保国会予以支持。我们需要修复问题重重的移民制度，以便吸引更多世界各地的人才和企业家来美国，因此，如果有公司到美国来落户，当他们需要带来一名关键人员以确保该公司的业务顺利进行时，他们不会陷入一堆繁文缛节。好消息是，我们知道两党均支持移民改革，我们需要做的是确保今年完成这项工作。

We’ve got to continue to make smart investments in research and development, education, infrastructure -- all the things that historically have made America the most attractive place on the planet for businesses to invest. We’ve got to build on that success. That’s who we are as a country. And we have a tradition here of tackling new challenges, adapting to new circumstances, seizing new opportunities. And that’s one of the reasons that history shows over the last two centuries that when you bet on America, that bet pays off.
我们必须继续在研发、教育和基础设施方面进行明智的投资——所有这些都已使美国历来都是地球上最能吸引企业投资的地方。我们必须在这一成功的基础上再接再厉。这就是我们美国的本色。我们有应对新挑战、适应新形势、抓住新机遇的传统。历史表明，在过去的两个世纪里，只要相信美国就能从中获益，这种传统就是其中的原因之一。

So to all the business leaders here today and around the world: We want to be your partner in helping to write the next chapter in our history. We want you to join the generations of immigrants and entrepreneurs and foreign investors who have discovered exactly what it means when we say we are the land of opportunity. That is not a myth; it’s a proven fact.
因此，我要对今天在座的和世界各地的商界领袖说：我们希望成为你们的合作伙伴，帮助谱写我们历史的新篇章。我们希望你们加入历代移民和企业家及外国投资者的行列——他们发现了我们所说的美国是机遇之地的真实含义。这不是神话，而是得到验证的事实。

There are a lot of wonderful countries out there. But this is a place where you can do business, create great products, deliver great services, make money, and do good at the same time. So you should find out why there’s no substitute for those proud words: “Made in America.” And here’s three more words: “Select the USA.” When you do, you’ll find some of the world’s best workers, some of the world’s most innovative entrepreneurs. You’ll find a government, and a President who is committed to helping you create more good jobs for the middle class, and helping you succeed well into the 21st century.
美国之外还有很多了不起的国家。但在这里，你们可以开展业务、创造一流的产品、提供卓越的服务、赚钱，并同时做好事。因此，你们应当了解“美国制造”这几个令人自豪的字眼无可替代的原因。这里还有几个字：“选择美国”。当你们这么做时，你们将发现世界上一些最好的员工和最具创新精神的企业家。你们会发现一个致力于帮助你们为中产阶层创造更多的就业好机会并帮助你们在21世纪获得成功的政府和总统。

We are open for business. And we’re looking forward to partnering with all of you in the months and years ahead.
我们对商业开放。我们期待在未来的岁月里与你们所有人携手并进。

Thank you very much. (Applause)
非常感谢大家。（掌声）