Warren Buffett’s Video Address at the 2015 SelectUSA Investment Summit

Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, gives a video address at the 2015 SelectUSA Investment Summit. For more information on investing in the United States

Transcript of this video –

0:08 >> Good morning.

0:09 I’d like to welcome all of you that have come from all over the world

0:12 to learn a little bit more about doing business in the United States,

0:16 and I could tell you it is a great place to do business.

0:20 And I’ve been doing business here since– well, I guess I started y first business when I was 5

0:25 or 6, and I’m 84, so you figure it out.

0:28 I’d also like to thank the people from state and local governments that have come

0:33 to show off their particular environment, and I can tell the people who’ve come

0:39 from aboard you are going to get a lot of good ideas from these people

0:43 about where you might locate, so take advantage of them.

0:47 Fifty years ago, I took control of a company called Berkshire Hathaway

0:53 that was a failing textile manufacturer in New England,

0:56 and over those fifty years we’ve acquired dozens and dozens of companies, practically all of them

1:04 in the United States, so we now have 300,000 people working for us in the United States.

1:09 We have a market cap of maybe $350 billion and believe me; I know that a very large part

1:17 of our success has come because we’ve been operating in the United States.

1:21 We’ve had a terrific tail wind; it’s been a home field

1:25 like no other home field, and there’s more to come.

1:29 So join in with us and Berkshire Hathaway’s going to do well in the years ahead,

1:33 but I think we’ll have a lot of people coming from around the world

1:36 that are going to do very well too.

1:38 The United States is a market almost like none other you have a GDP

1:45 of seventeen and a half trillion dollars.

1:48 You have 320 million-plus consumers; a very high percentage of them

1:53 that have significant disposable income.

1:56 You have innovation encouraged and alive in all parts of the United States.

2:05 You have people who like to work and get ahead.

2:09 It’s really– it’s what I call the mother lode of opportunity, and that mother lode runs wide

2:15 and deep under the United States.

2:17 And the past has been great, but the future is going to be better.

2:22 If you look at what we had in 1776, we had a country with a bunch of trees growing on it

2:27 and not much else, four million people,

2:30 and now we have an economy that’s seventeen and a half trillion dollars.

2:34 A lot of things must have accounted for that,

2:37 but I think probably the main thing is we’ve had a rule of law which is very important,

2:44 and who wants to be running a business in a country where you don’t have that?

2:49 We’ve had an equality of opportunity.

2:54 We’ve encouraged entrepreneurs.

2:58 We’ve encouraged innovators.

3:00 People have seen the examples of others around them.

3:03 When you see what going back a hundred years when you see what Henry Ford accomplished here,

3:08 and Andrew Carnegie, or Rockefeller or whomever you want to pick, Edison you know it just–

3:15 it gives you a spirit of innovativeness, people who love to compete, a huge market.

3:23 So the market system works, and I don’t think there’s any place

3:27 that works better than in the United States.

3:29 If you’re a investor or a business from outside the United States coming here

3:36 for the first time I think you should take advantages of all the resources

3:41 that are available to you to learn more about doing business here,

3:44 and you can start with the Department of Commerce and SelectUSA,

3:49 and then repeat that with many many representatives of state governments

3:58 and local communities that will want to tell you about why they are the place to go.

4:03 And we find even being based in the United States that we learn a lot by listening

4:10 to the state representatives about why we might locate a new plant there,

4:15 or buy a new business in those states.

4:16 So there’s a wealth of information available with no cost, and people will come to see you,

4:24 and you’re going to employee people there, and so you should have no problem at all in getting

4:31 to understand the game in the United States.

4:33 And believe me once you learn about that game you’re going to want to come here.