A Stronger Economy for North Carolina
Today, December 12, 2024, Governor Roy Cooper spoke at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina (EDPNC) Board of Directors meeting where he highlighted the state’s strong economy during his Administration.
These remarks were part of a series of events highlighting the Governor’s major accomplishments and progress made for North Carolina during his time in office.
Remarks as prepared:
Good morning. It’s good to be with all of you today. Thank you for that introduction, Gene. And thanks to you and to Chris Chung for your leadership at EDPNC. Thank you, Sec. Sanders, for your leadership and service as well. And thanks to everyone here for the work you do to make North Carolina’s economy the best in the country. As CEO of NC, my mission has been a North Carolina where people are better educated, healthier, have more money in their pockets and have the opportunity to live lives of purpose and abundance — you’ve helped us attain those goals.
As I reflect on my two terms as Governor of North Carolina, I can’t help but view our economic revival over the last 8 years as a great comeback story. I was sworn in at 12:01 am on January 1st 2017. While I physically took the oath in the State Capitol, I also stood amid the rubble of HB2.
The broken bits and pieces of our state’s reputation and economy. The dashed hopes of so many people. And a pervasive fear that we might never get back to where we were.
Major companies were pulling planned economic development deals — perhaps ones that some of you worked on. Musicians and entertainers were cancelling shows. Sporting events were being moved to other states. The film industry left town. The list went on and on.
But there was one intangible impact that weighed heavy on me that New Year’s Eve and the days to come. It was the people who told me — this isn’t who we are. This isn’t what our state’s about. We could measure the impact of HB2 in lost jobs, lost revenue, lost plans. But so many North Carolinians, they had lost their belief in our state.
I knew we had to turn that around. And I knew we would, because in North Carolina, our success IS our people. We rise time and again because of the resilience of every community across our state. But even as we erased HB2 from the books, these past 8 years certainly tested us. With historic challenges from devastating storms and the shock of a global pandemic, our comeback story was never a given.
And where are we today? We’ve added more than 640,000 good-paying jobs across North Carolina since 2017. We’re the third-fastest growing state in the country. We are the best state for business. And we’ve restored our reputation as a place where people can be innovative, grow their business and thrive. And the people in this room deserve a lot of credit for it.
Because our success wouldn’t have happened without focused, determined teamwork, along with our most important asset — the greatest workforce in the world — North Carolina’s people.
Consider a project like Wolfspeed investing $5 billion and creating 1,800 jobs in Chatham County to build the processors needed for our booming clean energy economy. Or Toyota investing $13.9 billion and creating more than 5,000 jobs in Randolph County to make electric and hybrid batteries.
If you looked at those sites 5 or 6 years ago — they were trees and open space. But we had the vision to make them so much more. To pull together state agencies and economic development teams and community colleges to pitch North Carolina as the place to come, to build, to grow.
I know staff and leaders at EDPNC, Commerce and local economic development teams had many late nights, strategy sessions and long trips to help us ensure success. You always provided to me a wealth of concise, critical information as I conducted Executive Mansion meetings, site visits, Zoom and telephone calls with CEOs and key company leaders to sell them on our state as the place for them to come or expand. I’m grateful for the bipartisan help from the legislature as they trusted us with making important decisions about performance-based incentives. Our system has been highly successful.
And the long term impact will be to create great-paying jobs that give our people opportunities for the American Dream.
Seventy years ago, a forward-looking group of North Carolinians had the vision to see a place for research and development. They recognized an urgent need to diversify our state’s economic anchors. And they worked collaboratively to do something about it. Today, we know their work as the Research Triangle Park.
Then a little more than 40 years ago, spotting yet another shift in industry, our leaders gathered strength from our word-class universities, medical schools and researchers to launch the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, which has helped to spark a surging life sciences sector in our economy. That was followed by the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, MCNC, that helped develop our state’s reputation as a leader in technology.
Over the last 8 years, we’ve driven success by leaning in to our strengths and strategically focusing on areas where we’re poised to win jobs and grow. Clean energy, aerospace, life sciences, new ideas in agriculture. Bringing the positive impacts of this growth to small towns and rural communities, like where I grew up, not just the big cities. Lifting up the strength of our community colleges. Harnessing the power of our innovative spirit.
To go from the dark days of HB2 to the best state for business twice in a row just 5 years later, that — THAT — is the North Carolina I know.
But I can’t leave this job without looking to the future and reminding everyone that progress isn’t promised. We have to work for it. We have to earn it.
And everything we’ve accomplished hangs in the balance, because to stay on top you have to invest in your talent.
The future of our state goes to class everyday in our public schools. The workers we need to move our economy depend on quality, reliable child care. The state we know and love is utterly incomplete without a flourishing network of mountain towns and small businesses and family farms. If we shortchange investments into these institutions and our infrastructure, we risk losing our way and losing our place — again.
When I took office 8 years ago, nobody thought we could actually expand Medicaid. But that didn’t stop us. And over the years we convened a non-traditional coalition of supporters to fight with us for expansion. One of the important voices we brought to the table was the business community.
Prominent business leaders and small business owners alike had realized that without health care, too many workers were falling between the cracks, unable to stay healthy and on the job. They knew that health care providers charged more to the private sector when they had patients who couldn’t pay. They weren’t health care advocates, but they knew that our success IS our people. And so they got involved to push this legislature to do the right thing. Together we made expansion happen and now almost 600,000 more North Carolinians have health care without additional state tax dollars.
In the weeks and months and years ahead, we need that same resolve to help push legislators to do more for public schools, more for quality childcare and more for Western North Carolina.
And I know that we can summon that resolve. Just look at all that we’ve accomplished together already. Together we’ve built an economy that can stand the test of time and welcome prosperity with open arms for generations to come.
It’s my hope for our state that we can keep it that way. Thank you all for your partnership these last 8 years, and I look forward to continuing to help our great state succeed.
