President Barack Obama has always believed that America succeeds when business succeeds. He has a deep, abiding commitment to doing what is necessary to strengthen our economy and make America more competitive. That is why, having spent decades in government and business myself, I was amazed to see the critical comments George Buckley, chief executive and chairman of 3M, made in the Financial Times this week, when he dubbed the president as “anti-business”.
As a government our responsibility is to lay the foundations for the private sector to thrive; indeed, that is at the heart of our strategy for growth. We are reforming America’s schools so that businesses can hire the world’s most skilled and talented workers – with solutions driven not from Washington, but from across the country. We are training 100,000 new maths and science teachers. And we are both making college more affordable and revitalising our community college system, so that America continues to not only have the best universities in the world, but also the highest college graduation rates.
Our administration is also upgrading our transportation and communication networks so businesses can move goods and information more quickly and cheaply. And we are redoubling our commitment to the research and innovation that is central to our long-term prosperity, including a proposal to enhance and permanently extend the research and development tax credit for businesses. We have also proposed reforms to address the very immigration problem Mr Buckley described. The president has said clearly that he does not believe in a system that forces students on a visa to leave the country after they earn an advanced degree, which means we train our competition.