U.S. President Trump urges foreign firms to transfer knowledge as America seeks to stay ahead

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for companies investing in America to equally invest in the transfer of knowledge and skills to enable the country to ‘learn from them and do even better than them.’

“I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them and do even better than them at their own “game,” sometime into the not too distant future,” Trump wrote in his late Sunday post.

In a recent post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump was talking about international tech and manufacturing companies setting up offices in the United States.

He wrote that when such companies invest heavily in the country to build advanced products such as semiconductor chipsets and ships, these usually bring in their own experts to run operations at first.

“When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other “things,” come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land,” he wrote in his post.

For Trump, the idea is to ensure that U.S. employees eventually become knowledgeable enough to build their own products even if the foreign companies later scale back or leave the nation.

“If we didn’t do this, all of that massive Investment will never come in the first place — Chips, Semiconductors, Computers, Ships, Trains, and so many other products that we have to learn from others how to make, or, in many cases, relearn, because we used to be great at it, but not anymore. For example, Shipbuilding, where we used to build a ship a day and now, we barely build a ship a year,” he added.

According to July data by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, Japan led foreign investment in the United States with $754.1 billion in 2024, closely followed by the United Kingdom ($742.7 billion), Canada ($732.9 billion), and the Netherlands ($726.4 billion). Manufacturing accounted for the largest share of these investments, making up 42.3% of total foreign direct investment, with chemical manufacturing alone contributing $827.5 billion, about one-third of the $2.42 trillion invested in U.S. manufacturing.

These statements come amid Trump's focus on bringing back investments into the U.S. both from American firms and foreign companies.

In a previous statement, Trump had called for American tech firms to become patriotic and hire U.S. citizens instead of choosing to build factories in China and hiring people from India.