Goldman Sachs CEO urges Trump to invest like China in infrastructure

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein smiles as he participates in a panel discussion during the White House Summit on Working Families in Washington on June 23, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein praised China's infrastructure in his tweets and suggested that the US lags in maintenance of airports and roads, during his trip to China from June 6 to 10.

"Just landed from China, trying to catch up.... How did 'infrastructure week' go," Blankfein quipped on Twitter.

The message echoed another tweet Blankfein sent earlier, in which he urged the US to invest in infrastructure to keep pace with China.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein praises China's infrastructure in his tweet on June 6 and pokes fun at US President Donald Trump's weekly infrastructure initiatives in his June 10, 2017, tweet. [Photo/Twitter]

"Arrived in China, as always impressed by condition of airport, roads, cell service, etc. US needs to invest in infrastructure to keep up!" he wrote.

Blankfein's tweets came amid US President Donald Trump's infrastructure initiatives.

On June 5, Trump rolled out a plan to revitalize US infrastructure with $1 trillion in investment, one of the biggest policy proposals after the country's immigration and healthcare.

Blankfein is not the only big wheel to point out China's world-class construction projects or services.

A screen grab shows California Governor Jerry Brown travelling from Nanjing to Beijing on June 5, 2017.

California Governor Jerry Brown described himself as the "foremost promoter of high-speed rail in America" when walking the aisles on a China high-speed train from Nanjing to Beijing last week, SinoVision Inc., a New York-based Chinese-language TV station, reported. Also, he blamed US political resistance when asked why the US did not have such a system.

In an interview with news website Business Insider this May, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon also shared a similar view.

"You might be shocked to find out, we haven't built a major airport for 20 years. China built 75 in the past 10 years," he said.

China has the most extensive network of high-speed rail in the world, with a total of 7,000 miles, while the US has built none. What's more, thousands more miles of track for China and foreign countries, driven by China's Road and Belt Initiative, are under construction.

According to the Global Competitiveness Report 2014-2015 published by the World Economic Forum, the US ranks 16th in quality of overall infrastructure, 15th in quality of rail system and 16th in quality of its roads.