Infrastructure S&P Global CEO Doug Peterson Explains Why Infrastructure is Important to U.S. Competitiveness

Washington - In a new video released today by Business Roundtable, Doug Peterson, President and CEO of S&P Global, describes why infrastructure is important to S&P and to America's economic competitiveness. Peterson also lays out several key policy priorities that the United States could pursue to improve the nation’s infrastructure for the long term. 

The full transcript of Peterson’s video is provided below.

Transcript:

Infrastructure’s important to S&P because we believe it creates jobs, it creates growth in an economy.

Infrastructure is something that makes our economy more competitive – very similar to what we thought about when we looked at tax reform. Competitiveness is one of the most important factors for infrastructure in the United States. 

The second thing is that good infrastructure brings pride to communities. They understand that they can get to work faster. The way that they live in their communities has been improved. 

The third thing is that infrastructure also brings safety. The newer, modern infrastructure improves the conditions of how we live and how we breath.

And then you can use that as a foundation to look at what are the conditions that we need to begin to undertake to have a much better infrastructure policy.

I’d look at the existing bills that worked today, things like the highway trust fund, let's make that sustainable. I'd look at ways to promote P3s across the economy. 

When we think about bringing private investment into infrastructure, this is a model that has worked in the United States, but also all around the world. There are really good lessons learned from Australia, from Canada, from some of the European countries about how you can bring private sector funding into the infrastructure space.

And finally, I'd look at ways to speed up permitting.

There's many infrastructure projects that could take 5, 6, 7 or 8 years before they're being actually implemented and being funded and being constructed. If we could speed that up that would also get the jobs created, allow our economy to be growing again.

We think it's very important that when people think about infrastructure they don't think just about this as a short-term investment or a short-term expense, but they look at it for the long run. Because, this way, you use better technology, you use better materials, you plan better. So, infrastructure is much better when its implemented with a long-term vision.