Selling Scotland to America still valid amid Trump turmoil, by Jeremy Grant

As the kilts sway down New York’s Fifth Avenue today amid a skirl of bagpipes to mark Tartan Week, it will be a welcome distraction from the policy mayhem from Trump’s White House. 

Now in its 26th year, the cultural event is a good excuse to bang the drum for Scotland as a destination for investment from the US, which is already the largest foreign investor in Scotland. 

About 700 US companies employ more than 115,000 people here, among them Wall Street titans JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citi, which have around 6,500 staff in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Amazon operates its largest UK fulfilment centre at a site the size of 14 football pitches at Dunfermline. Last week, Los Angeles-based film company Halo Entertainment said it would invest £28m opening an animation studio in Glasgow.

Yet as shock ripples out globally from Trump’s “America First” trade policy, some may start to question whether the US can be seen as a reliable investment partner – just as Europe is painfully re-assessing America’s role in underpinning western security and defence.

Emotions are running high. French president Emmanuel Macron has even suggested that French companies should pause investments in the US.

But it’s worth keeping in mind that the US has made critical investments in Scotland, including in renewable energy infrastructure. This is the kind of commitment that Kate Forbes, deputy first minister, calls “strategic investment that matters for our national economy”. 

One example is Ardesier on the Moray Firth. This brownfield site is being redeveloped into the largest dedicated offshore wind deployment port facility in Scotland through a £300 million investment from Texas-based private equity firm Quantum Capital Group.

Financial firm BlackRock, busy expanding a presence that’s been in Edinburgh for 25 years, also owns almost half of the city’s airport through its Global Infrastructure Partners subsidiary. 

Clearly, neither the UK nor Scottish governments believe that Trump’s brutal undoing of the global trade order through tariffs should halt efforts to sell Scotland to the US. 

The scale of what’s needed in, say, renewable infrastructure investment will not be met through domestic sources alone. There is probably scope for more US financial institutions to “re-shore” back-office functions to Scotland, harnessing data analytics talent streaming out of Scotland’s universities.

Engagement is thus sensible. Ian Murray, Scottish secretary, was joined in meetings last week in Washington, DC and New York by the Lord Mayor of London and Scottish Financial Enterprise chief executive Sandy Begbie. Murray said this was “laying the groundwork” for a global investment summit in Edinburgh in October. John Swinney, first minister, will have similar meetings in New York on Monday.

Meanwhile, both governments have been fine-tuning the machinery of investment promotion. The Department for Business and Trade this year appointed its first “inward investment lead” for Scotland. Forbes, who meets with Murray monthly, is setting up a new “gateway” for investment enquiries designed to speed things up. 

Still, it would help if they were seen to be more joined up. Unhelpfully, both use their own versions of a “Brand Scotland” promotional tagline. The one place you need to get your sales pitch right is America.