 There's a number I'll share with you now that it's kind of telling about first of all how US Multinationalists think and it tells them what they think about Ireland, but in the last five years 2008 2012 US companies invested more capital in Ireland for indirect investment than they had done in the previous 50 years 50 years and then some and so a lot has changed since the crisis about how Multinationalists US Multinationalists view the world in terms of their global supply chains Concentrating where they invest that extra dollar overseas Ireland is very much in the forefront of the minds of US Multinationalists for lots of reasons and not just corporate You know lower corporate tax rates There's other reasons for that and every day when I talk about with a lot of folks back in New York It's about well, it's all about corporate tax rates lower. It's not Multinationalists in the United States to be successful have to leverage skilled labor. They need access to markets. They need wealthy consumers They need a transparency and rule of laws. They need the ease of doing business They need to be places where they're competitive and at the end of the day that leads a lot of US companies to Ireland in the EU in general The European Union is still the primary source where US companies invest their capital Whether it's an historic cost basis or annual flows The EU is still taking around 50 55% of the global total and that's counterintuitive to the narrative out there That says US companies are leaving the US to go to China India Mexico or any place that offers a low-cost Competitive advantage in some cases. That's true, but they're the minority not the exception and really for the last 50 years You have US companies have always had their eye on the European Union because they want the large wealthy markets to tap into it We need it. The US economy is growing around two and a half percent right now We've got an aging demographic population to deal with we have saturated markets But we need the big overlay of the European Union and that's where Ireland comes in as a great bridge to the big EU market and as I remind people on Wall Street many times You know why Europe that was a big question why Europe, you know, who cares about Europe that kind of that's a mentality Well, I remind them that were collectively the 28 countries of the European Union is the largest economic entity in the world It's larger than the United States. It's wealthy more people and that kind of dwarfs China in India And I'll talk about those folks here in a moment, but the European Union I guess the good news and hopefully it's true that there you're coming out of the recession It's going to be spotty. It's not going to be tremendously robust But in the last two years I've sat on Wall Street and listened to one US company after another GE IBM Cisco and so forth say we had pretty good earnings for this quarter, but Europe is still a drag, you know Europe is still hurting us and whether because of the recession I think that's behind us now. I think a lot of US companies are going to talk about how Europe is improving Less bad. It's even better better than expected and that's going to be hugely successful If and when we do get down to that, you know, the 11th hour with the free trade agreement I'll talk about t-tip in a moment So I'm encouraged that the European Union a is growing and B I never bought the nonsense two years ago that the eurozone was going to break apart that the euro was going to Go by the wayside. I don't believe the UK is going to lead the the EU There was but you know, it's kind of easy to say that now But I remember getting a lot of pushback In New York amongst investors and with a lot of big institutional money managers betting against the euro betting against Greece The periphery Ireland included saying like they can't pull it off. It's not they're not going to hold it together And I think that's behind us and I think that's that's a positive Variable by which we should all be happy for I'd also say a positive indicator is that the US economy? Despite the shenanigans in Washington the US economy has found its footing. We were rebuilding were resilient many metrics in the US are now higher today than they were prior to the crisis, right? So we were at pre-crisis highs record highs in some cases when it comes to automobile production Housing starts net household net worth GDP and so forth So Europe has a strong partner in the United States And in fact the United States has been doing its part to help Europe come through the recession and the crisis by running a $100 billion trade deficit with the EU for the last couple of years. It's gonna be even higher this year They'll start to tell off so but that's the part and parcel of a dynamic relationship in the sense when one partner is down The other one kind of hopefully grows and kind of can be offsetting variable and with the US in Europe And it's not appreciated and it is here, but not not in the United States I'll just be honest with him blunt with you. They don't appreciate how big the transatlantic economy is They don't appreciate what European companies are doing in America ie creating output creating jobs Providing good wages tax revenues exports for for the US and Conversely, there isn't a general awareness that when US companies do invest overseas It's here in Ireland in the EU as opposed to these low-cost areas China and India and so forth So for me the broad painting with a broad brush Even even we are here. We're here our 2013. We're well into this century, right? We're going deeper into the second decade of the century and still I keep waiting for the numbers to change I keep waiting for US companies to really go heavy into Africa or China and India But no when you aggregate the numbers quarter by quarter you see some shifts There's a shift of US investment within the EU But I think Ireland is winning that war so to speak I see less money going into France for instance less out of Belgium I think Spain and Italy could see a little bit more here if they lower their costs and do it at Ireland has done with the internal adjustments Germany is still a focal point because of the capital machinery and the R&D Complex Switzerland I think is becoming uncompetitive and they're going to start to see less money flow from the United States So within Europe US multinationals are reconfiguring Rethinking how they do business in within the EU and how they approach it and it's clearly there's three countries that stand out It's the Netherlands the UK and Ireland are becoming the focal point more and more of concentrating how US and where US companies do business in the European Union So Ireland has a very good kind of setup for that another statistic that we put in report This morning was that of all the countries by which US multinationals leverage These countries through access larger deeper markets like uses an export platform, right? Lot of the US companies they're in Mexico and they send the product back to the US Canada the same thing China not so much but the media thinks we just over there in China to kind of sell back to the US It's not true 90% of what foreign affiliates make in China stays in China But the number one export platform for US companies today is Ireland Right, it's very dynamic. There's a there's a table in there that Ireland was ranked 13th in terms of scale But now they're number one so Ireland's come a number one export platform for US companies to reach deeper into the EU And so when we talk about t-tip The transatlantic, you know partnership that I think you know, I'll be honest with you I the odds of this happening my opinion not John Hopkins or Bank of America or anything I would say one in three successful But you know, I'm trade I'm kind of jaded by trade negotiations because they always seem to go on forever and they never come they never finished Doha for instance Doha is the first multilateral around that's failed in the post-war era T-tip tremendous amount of opportunity It's gonna be a tough sell on both sides of the ocean in the United States The good news is no one's paying attention to it or really you know, but kind of focused on it I mean, we got too many other issues like keeping the government open So, you know, we'll come back to that but t-tip, you know, I said this in Brussels early this year It's it's good, you know The good news is that we need we both need to be growing. We both need to have the unemployment rate coming down We both need to have our politicians are the general public aware of the benefits And that's kind of my mission for quite some time is to kind of spread the word about the benefits of this Relationship with the big EU partners and vice versa why it's beneficial for US companies or US consumers to have big US Irish corporations or European corporations operating in the United States So t-tip more about not so much lowering as you know, the the the tariffs, but the non-tariff barriers This gets very technical in this sense, you know, whether it's packaging rules and regulations around health Life sciences who automobiles this is really in the weeds and to me the big winners will be Corporations and hopefully I'll trickle down to consumers, you know If corporations are lowering their costs increasing their efficiencies reaping reaching deeper into each other's markets That should help earnings drive more hiring more investment. Hopefully in each in each other's markets That's the game plan But I think it's going to be a tough sell and trade negotiations in general are going to be a tough sell Particularly in the United States. We're just talking about this a moment ago President Obama has not even asked for trade promotion authority yet, right? He needs that because it goes to Congress who knows what's going to come on maybe nothing Well, nothing comes out of Congress and not much comes out of Congress anyways on a good day let alone on a day You know day-to-day so and it's a tough sell I mean, I'll tell you you know the Americans we still have an unemployment rate. That's unacceptably high at seven point three percent It's that's that's that's new territory for the United States to deal with so it quote-unquote. It's it's high We're gonna have a window here It's gonna be the end of 2014 because once we get into 15 and 16 all bets are off There's not much happening on Capitol Hill particularly a major trade piece of legislation Maybe the good news playing playing devil's advocate. We're running two parallel tracks here in the United States One is the agreement with Europe and the other agreements trade agreements with Asia Maybe we forego Asia for Europe or maybe vice versa We'll see how it plays out and then even here in Ireland and in European Union, you know to do a deal With the United States that opens up markets and creates potential more competition the threat of lost jobs That's gonna be a tough sell as well particularly You mean the unemployment rates across Europe are staggering are staggering relatively speaking particularly much younger workers So t-tip, I'm excited about it But cautious cautiously optimistic that this can gain the traction and by which we can sell it to our constituents I think the biggest risk out there is not in the Negotiations and the technical details in them itself. It says there's just not a general awareness of how important the bilateral Relationship is I've been at this for I think 15 20 years now talking about the transatlantic economy And I'm still amazed about how the pushback I get particularly United States saying like no, it's not about Europe Who cares about Europe quote-unquote it's about China and India and so forth And I'll just kind of end by talking about China India and the bricks and I can just tell you you know Honestly my opinion and I've said this over and over They're not grown up. They're not ready to lead the global economy. They're not about global governance They're not about you know caring about your your constituents my constituents They see the world differently. If you're in China in India, you've got about a billion people You got to think about first before you worry about well How are we gonna cut a deal the global commons with the United States or Europe? So to me if we've learned anything in the last 12 months is that the developing economies are not up to the task of Running the world let alone leading it right their growth has slowed down dramatically China's growth is really six seven percent Brazil's growth is less than Ireland's probably are gonna kind of equivalent to it their recession India four or five percent growth If you believe the numbers which I don't in general though the emerging markets are having a tough year That's what wet that's what that should concern everyone in this room Because we don't want them to fail. We want them to succeed to be global partners In that sense and they're not living up to the hype and the expectations right and they're 50% of world GDP now Right on a purchasing power parity basis to develop is 50% the developing is you know 50-51. It's moving in this direction That's all well and good But you've got this 50% that really doesn't know anything about Looking at the big broader world and doing things for the better of mankind as opposed to their own self-interest And that's what the US and the European relationship has been all about really for the last 60 years It's about not making you know each other better, but the world better and so that's why I think t-tip is so important This is a huge step forward to deepen relationship between two mature partners Give some more vitality to it bring some energy to it You know, I remember when I was in March over in Brussels The t-tip was like a hot topic because the president just announced it in the State of the Union And there's a lot of energy in the room in Brussels. I mean that's the most energy. I've ever seen out of Brussels It kind of felt nice, but at the same time I was a little worried like you're gonna burn out You're gonna get fatigued because it's not gonna happen. I mean, I don't you know be the kind of the skunk of the garden party But I like the energy level and it kind of speaks to the value of yet yet what he could yet to come So we not only need to t-tip for the United States and Europe to continue on the path of growth and better The lives of our each other's population, but it's gonna be a bullish case for the global economy, right? It's hugely important that we shine the light for Africa the Middle East parts of the Indian subcontinent and even China for that matter To say here's how the standards are going to be set. Here's the rules of the game If you want to be a part of this big huge economic block called the transatlantic economy, here's how you do Here's how we do business. Here's how we treat into intellectual property rights. Here's how we report Accounting rules of law and so forth. So this is up to me. I don't want to be too negative I'll end by saying you know is it t-tip? It could be the last chance could be the last chance the United States and Europe to Significantly control the future of the global economy and when I say the future I mean like 10 20 30 40 50 years If we can make this happen We kind of set the rules lay out the playing field for the rest of the mankind to play by and I don't think we're gonna tilt You know the playing field against them. I'll be it many think that but to me It's a huge opportunity for for United States and Europe to show the world that we still matter They know that but let's remind them starkly and make the world a better place in the meantime. Thank you