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The latest from CBI Washington
The CBI’s Washington office has published a report, Sterling Assets, that analyses British investment in the United States. The headlines from the report make compelling reading: the UK is by far the largest foreign investor in the US, with $303bn of capital invested here in 2006. British investment supports nearly one million American jobs – and those jobs pay better than the average wage, $65,000 a year compared to the average $50,000 a year.
The report then breaks down British investment on a state-by-state basis, allowing us to analyse the impact of British FDI on particular economies. The CBI is currently communicating the findings of this study to a wide range of Congressional offices. To download a full copy of the report click here.
News from Washington
This is a selection of shortened versions of items from our monthly email information service, America Update. If you are a CBI member and would like to receive it, please email America Update
Congressional update
Congress officially broke up for a five-week vacation on 1 August. Rather amusingly, several Republican members of the House of Representatives decided to sacrifice their first week of leave to protest the institution’s failure to pass a bill allowing offshore drilling for oil. Despite the fact that all the lights had been turned off – literally – they turned up for debating sessions day after day, speaking to an audience of bemused tourists and bafflingly large groups of boy scouts.
It would have been good television – except that the television feeds had been turned off too. But it has worked, to an extent: the question of how best to address America’s future energy needs has become a central one in the Presidential campaign. Before going into recess, Congress had been utterly gridlocked over the correct response to high petrol prices. They will return to the issue in September – but don’t expect bipartisan harmony to break out.
When Congress returns, they will also return to another item of unfinished business: a package of tax "extenders" that Senate Republicans would not allow to move forward while energy legislation remained unfinished. The expiring tax provisions in the bill include several of great interest to the business community, including tax credits for renewable energy production. But both the tax and energy package will have to compete for time in a short session: it’s election year, so most Congressmen are hoping to break for the end of the session by 1 October.
Director-general visits US
Richard Lambert visited Washington DC and New York in late July. There were two main strands to his visit – public services and climate change. On the first, Richard joined Secretary of State for Business John Hutton in leading the first UKTI trade mission to focus on the US market for public services. Accompanied by a dozen companies from the sector, they held discussions with key federal and state officials, and promoted the UK contracting model.
Second, Richard held discussions with several of the most important US business organisations on climate change: he explained to them how the CBI had developed its policy over the years, and what now represents the majority view in the UK business community. Read-outs from both the public services mission and the climate change meetings are available to CBI members from rhian.chilcott@cbi.org.uk
Transatlantic travel – for goods and people
A bipartisan group of twenty Congressmen has sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Ralph Basham urging that a pilot program be conducted on the "10 + 2" rule. This rule sets out new requirements for the information that must be gathered and submitted to the US government about all shipments destined for US ports.
Forty trade associations wrote to Congress urging that it ask the CBP to run a pilot program before issuing a final rule. No word yet on whether a pilot will be forthcoming. Meanwhile, CBP have announced that maritime containers in transit to the US will be required to have a seal that meets a certain standards (international standard ISO/PAS 17712) by 15 October.
Moving people isn’t much easier. The long-running transatlantic dispute over who’s in and who’s out of the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP) continues. The European Commission is desperate to get all EU members into the VWP: currently, eleven of the twelve recently-acceded states are not. In an effort to put pressure on the US, the Commission last month suggested that if the US doesn’t extend VWP privileges to all EU citizens, Europe will start demanding that US diplomats have to get visas if they wish to enter the EU. It could be hard for the Commission to enforce this threat, though, since it would have to be agreed by all member states.
Data protection
The Commerce Department has developed a certification mark that will make it easier to identify companies that are in compliance with US-EU data protection standards. Companies will be able to display the mark on their websites to demonstrate their compliance with the US-EU Safe Harbour Framework, a program allowing transfers of personal information from Europe to the United States. In order to display the certification mark, participating American companies must follow specific instructions developed by ITA. Only those organizations that have self-certified and are listed on ITA’s official Safe Harbor Program list will be allowed to use the mark in an appropriate manner. For more information, go to http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/Safe_Harbor_Announcement.asp
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