Investor Watch: March 6, 2025

Gazing through the U.S. Census Bureau’s business lens can unveil some actionable intelligence.

ASIA

Tractus Asia Co-Founder John Evans offers his perspective on a new level of uncertainty and risk in global site selection as the new U.S. presidential administration takes the reins and “wait and see” is not an option.

INVESTMENT PROFILE: SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

New investments bring jobs and prosperity to multiple communities in San Bernardino County.

Transportation, Technology, and Talent are just three of the many reasons why the Northern Kentucky Region is the top place to call home for your business.

• Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport offers two global air hubs — DHL Express Global Superhub and Amazon Air — and 55+ nonstop destinations. You can get your products and people around the world easily and efficiently.
• IT employment grew by more than 29% from 2020 – 2025 and is projected to keep growing at an accelerated pace.
• Forbes Named Cincinnati the Best Place for Young Professionals to Live in the U.S. in 2024.
• Seven Fortune 500 companies call the Cincinnati region home.

• A total of 25 four-year colleges/universities are located within 75 miles
• SparkHaus, a dedicated space for entrepreneurs and venture capital in the region, is run by Blue North, fueling innovation in Northern Kentucky
• LifeSciKY, a new wet lab incubator opening in 2025, is building on a thriving life sciences sector

The Northern Kentucky Region is the top place to call home for your business. It could be just the advantage you need to help your business take off. Visit be-nky.com/business to learn why.

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Greg Breeding, an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, designed the new set of fishing lure stamps using original photographs by Sarah Cramer Shields of such types as crankbaits, spoon lures and topwater lures.
Photo courtesy of USPS

The U.S. Postal Service next week will issue a set of Freshwater Fishing Lures stamps with a ceremony to be held at Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife National Museum & Aquarium in Springfield. Site Selection Editor in Chief was fortunate to hear Morris, founder of Bass Pro Shops, speak at the Southern Legislative Conference annual meeting in St. Louis in 2016, when “he described the invention of the jelly worm in an oven, and selling lures in the back of his father’s Brown Derby liquor store in the Ozarks.” The next year, he bought Cabela’s for $5 billion, doubling Bass Pro Shops’ footprint. Today his net worth is approaching $10 billion. Morris also heads White River Marine Group, whose boat manufacturing expansions were described in the 2019 Missouri Economic Development Guide produced by Conway Custom Content.

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Trucks wait in line last summer at the border crossing in Chihuahua, Mexico, near Ciudad Juárez, ready to deliver Mexican manufactured goods to the United States.
Photo by Jeremy Poland: Getty Images

The Committee for Economic Development, the public policy center of The Conference Board, in late February posted a policy backgrounder on how new U.S. policy affects inbound and outbound investment, particularly with respect to China. Analysis and charts posted this week by the Peterson Institute for International Economics examine which imports from Canada and Mexico will be hardest hit by new U.S. tariffs, most of which went into effect this week.

Photo courtesy of Bobby Jones Links

As the tour professionals make the Florida swing, golf fans already have marked their calendars for 35 days from today when The Masters begins at Augusta National in Augusta, Georgia. The name most associated with that course is Bobby Jones, whose namesake Bobby Jones Golf Course (pictured) in Atlanta earlier this year was named the 2025 Jemsek National Course of the Year at the recent National Golf Course Owners Association’s (NGCOA) Golf Business Conference in Orlando, Florida.

A $33 million redevelopment project that began in 2011 transformed the course “from a poorly conditioned, obsolete and underutilized property into a facility that not only features a unique reversible 9-hole layout designed by the late Bob Cupp and a state-of-the-art driving range, but is now an integral part of the local golf community and a shining example of how a course can enrich the lives of people throughout a community,” said a release from management company Bobby Jones Links. In addition to programming for military veterans, the course has seen more than 6,000 junior players come through in the past five years — a Youth on Course program allows juniors to play the course at any time for $5. “The facility’s Dan Yates Putting Course and Cupp Links, a five-hole par-3 course, can both be played free of charge, as can the practice putting green and chipping green,” says the company, noting its practice range now has Trackman Range technology. Murray Golf House at the site hosts the Georgia State Golf Association, Georgia PGA Section and Georgia Golf Hall of Fame, as well as Boone’s restaurant, which has become a destination in and of itself.