Why Foreign Corporations are Buying into U.S. Business

Abstract

More than ever before, foreign companies have been making themselves at home in U.S. markets. The rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the United States reflects the emergence of highly competitive firms based abroad and is thus linked to the loss of U.S. international competitiveness in trade. Two-way flows of direct investment have blurred the distinction, at least among industrial nations, between host and source countries. While the United States remains a major source country as well as the strongest voice for international action to regulate national investment policies, it has also become the world's most important host to direct investment, with all the domestic political pressures entailed. A key policy question for the 1990s is whether the United States will continue its leadership role in combating investment policies that achieve nationalistic objectives at the expense of global efficiency, or join other host countries in adopting its own nationalistic policies.