New Foreign Direct Investment in the United States, 2018

Expenditures by foreign direct investors to acquire, establish, or expand U.S. businesses totaled $296.4 billion in 2018, up 8.7 percent from $272.8 billion in 2017.

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Additional highlights of the statistics on new foreign direct investment for 2018:

• Expenditures for acquisitions were $287.3 billion, expenditures to establish new U.S. businesses were $5.3 billion, and expenditures to expand existing foreign-owned businesses were $3.8 billion.
• Total planned greenfield investment expenditures—expenditures to establish new U.S. businesses and to expand existing foreign-owned U.S. businesses—for investments initiated in 2018, which include both first-year spending and planned spending in other years, totaled $30.8 billion. 
• Employment at newly acquired, established, or expanded foreign-owned businesses in the United States was 430,600 in 2018.

For more information, read the full report.