Virginia Economic Review

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a sometimes overlooked, but vital, cornerstone of the U.S. economy. Investments from overseas create high-quality, skilled jobs that pay higher-than-average wages. In 2022, foreign direct investment to acquire, establish, or expand U.S.

When Dutch secondary packaging solutions provider BluePrint Automation decided to open a U.S. location in 1987, the company chose a site in Chesterfield County near Richmond, due in part to the regional talent market and multiple nearby ports that could facilitate importing.

When Ryan Buzzy was a child, his passion was to take radios apart to see how they worked. At 25, he’s not a kid anymore, but his passion for seeing how things work never changed.

Dennis Meseroll is co-founder and executive director of Tractus Asia Limited, a global foreign direct investment advisory firm based in Thailand that specializes in advising and assisting companies with investment and location decisions in Asia.

Foreign companies looking to invest in Virginia go through the same considerations as their domestic counterparts — site evaluation and selection, workforce availability, and logistical issues, to name a few.

How much does Dutch aviation and aerospace giant Airbus value Washington Dulles International Airport? Enough to pick nearby Loudoun County as a center of its U.S.-based spare parts distribution operations not once, but twice.

Jasjit Singh is the executive director of SelectUSA, a U.S. government program housed within the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration that works to attract foreign direct investment to the United States.

The LEGO Group’s new manufacturing facility in Chesterfield County is designed to support the company’s sustainability ambitions. From building practices to construction materials to operating functions to landscaping, the LEGO Group’s only U.S.

The word is out that Pulaski County is a “center for international business,” says Jonathan Sweet, administrator for the western Virginia county. Among the 33,000 people who call Pulaski County home is a large community of expatriates hailing from countries around the world.

In 2020, roughly 12 years after Volkswagen relocated its North American headquarters from the Detroit area to Fairfax County, the company faced a choice. With the end of the lease on its Herndon office space looming, would it move to Atlanta, where its Porsche subsidiary is located, or another city?

Ambassador Alexander Yui took over as the Taiwanese representative to the United States at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States (TECRO) in December 2023.

A Conversation With Ambassador Mark Brzezinski Ambassador Mark Brzezinski has served as the U.S. ambassador to Poland since 2021. He previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden from 2011–2015.

In 1981, computing giant IBM collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Laboratory for Computer Science for a conference, “The Physics of Computation.”

Dr. Sophia Economou is a professor of physics at Virginia Tech and the director of the university’s Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering. Her research focuses on theoretical quantum information science, including quantum computing with numerous types of qubits.

La Vida Cooper is the communications and navigation line of business manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the deputy program manager for strategic initiatives within the exploration and space communications projects division at Goddard, and the executive director of the Washington Metropolitan Quantum Network Research Consortium (DC-QNet), a joint initiative among six federal agencies and two affiliates to operate a quantum network testbed.

The quantum age is rapidly approaching. So rapidly, in fact, that any approach to developing a workforce must account for the changes happening at the speed of light as quantum science shifts from theoretical to practical application.

In the world of financial services, time can represent both money and opportunity lost. The potential time savings from the use of quantum computing can help investors ensure they accrue more money than regret.

Inside the glass-walled headquarters of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington County, some of the nation’s most talented scientists are working fast to usher in the quantum age in service of national defense.