PROJECT ”INVESTMENT BRIDGE” “Investment Bridge” delegation visit to the Southern states of the U.S. and meeting with George W. Bush in Austin, Texas, 1997 Continually responding to the needs of the transatlantic alliance, Atlantik-Brücke founded the “Investment Bridge” project to address political tensions that arise from the economic relationship between Germany and the United States. Atlantik-Brücke, under the leadership of its Honorary Chairman and Chairman Emeritus Dr. Walther Leisler Kiep, arranges trips that bring together members of the Deutscher Bundestag with members of the U.S. Congress. Since the program’s inception in 1997, Atlantik-Brücke delegations of German legislators have visited the Southern, Mid-western, Western, and Eastern United States, as well as the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Alberta. During the two-week journeys to North America, delegations meet with U.S. Senators, Congressmen, state legislators, and state officials, as well as business leaders. Congressmen are given the opportunity to meet their German counterparts on a personal basis, establishing deeper friendships across the Atlantic. They are also shown the extent to which German investment has created jobs in their districts (approx. 800,000 nationally), leading to new understandings of the German-American partnership. As German and American companies deal with globalization, investments worldwide have a direct effect on the United States and Germany, especially for German-American companies (DaimlerChrysler) or global companies (Volkswagen and Siemens). The latest “Investment Bridge” projects expanded its focus to address the economic rise of China, the most important site for new investments today. In 2005 and 2006, a group of parliamentarians, government representatives, and members of Atlantik-Brücke, under the leadership of Dr. Walther Leisler Kiep, travel to the economic centers of China to study the country’s increasingly important role in the global economy and its effect on transatlantic relations. Participants of the “Investment Bridge” 2005 in China (left to right): Dr. Gebhard Schweigler, Dr. Joachim Pfeiffer, Dr. Walther Leisler Kiep, Christian Lange, Hubertus Heil, Dr. Andreas Schockenhoff Photos of the IV Study Trip to China May 17 – 26, 2008, Peking, Chonqing, Shanghai			Project ”Investment Bridge”