That was a figure I would use over and over again in my Senate hearings and in interviews. It is really a very impressive figure. This growth reflects a broader trend of rising EU investment in the United States as well as Dutch confidence in the U.S. economy. With a couple of recent mega-mergers such as that between Aegon and Transamerica that have not yet shown up in the statistics, that figure may well be substantially larger. When we think of trade and investment, of course, we think first of mega-mergers and multinationals, not small businesses.
Elephants always get more attention than mice, especially in the press.
However, the mice are often faster and smarter and may well be more important in the long run. Small businesses, including an increasing number of businesses owned by women, play a crucial role in both our bilateral trading relationship and the global trading system. That role is likely to increase with the growing role of e-commerce and innovative technologies like ICT and biotechnology. In the United States, we have long recognized that small business is the motor of our economy. Our 24 million small businesses employ 53 percent of our workers and 38 percent of our high-tech workers.