Years ago, I was invited to a major Canadian city to present our competitiveness award for province-level success. Little did I know that a newly appointed minister was on the agenda, and he would speak first. His remarks featured criticism of the previous administration’s unfriendliness to business and his own pledge of red tape removal. Then it was my turn to take the dais to salute accomplishments during the outgoing administration’s tenure.
Awkward.
“So soar-y,” I might have said in my best Canadian-speak. But I wasn’t. Ultimately, I said, corporate growth had indeed occurred, whether inspired by the previous office-holder’s policies or despite them. It was up to the next leaders to build on the past as they saw fit.
As I wandered through post-election purgatory to close out 2024, pummeled by the outgoing administration’s 5:02 a.m. funding announcements for hundreds of billions of dollars in projects, company leaders were likely huddling in strategy sessions, mulling the odds of various policy changes, whether it involves a 25% tariff, corporate tax cuts and renewal of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, reshoring operations or de-shoring 11 million people. For them the watchwords are risk avoidance, continuity and opportunity, no matter what year it is.
For perspective, I reached out to former U.S. Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA), a professor in the University of Georgia’s political science department and an expert in fiscally responsible government. She recalled one of her favorite lectures that pointed out how American foreign policy moves in different directions at different levels.
“You have our national government moving one direction,” she wrote, “but NGOs and a vast array of other organizations may be moving in parallel or even contradictory directions (presumably including our state and local governments).” She said the new administration may move “in ways that may be very contrary to traditional American positioning on free trade, expanding markets and economic development more generally.”
For example, how is our home state of Georgia’s free trade and open-market-oriented economy going to dovetail with high tariffs and America First foreign and trade policy? “Will states benefit from foreign companies trying to establish a legal presence here to avoid tariffs or will they be hurt because foreign investment will be effectively taxed?” she asked. “How will states be influenced by the retaliatory tariffs that will almost certainly follow? Can they take actions to buffer this effect that perhaps counter or soften the impact of national policy?”
As a rudder for unknown seas ahead, we offer this packed issue, including the State of the States report, with state-level policies, demographics, projects and statistics relevant to economic development from the past year.
As for the year ahead, the questions keep multiplying. We don’t know the answers any more than you do. But we’ll be here to keep track of who’s investing where, and the reasons why.
