July 1, 2021

Expenditures by foreign direct investors to acquire, establish, or expand U.S. businesses totaled $120.7 billion in 2020, down 45.4 percent from $221.2 billion in 2019.

New Foreign Direct Investment Expenditures by Type, 1998-2020

Additional highlights of the statistics on new foreign direct investment for 2020:

  • Expenditures for acquisitions were $116.3 billion, expenditures to establish new U.S. businesses were $1.9 billion, and expenditures to expand existing foreign-owned businesses were $2.4 billion.
     
  • Total planned greenfield investment expenditures—expenditures to establish new U.S. businesses andto expand existing foreign-owned U.S. businesses—for investments initiated in 2020, which include both first-year spending and planned spending in other years, totaled $19.5 billion.
     
  • Employment at newly acquired, established, or expanded foreign-owned businesses in the United States was 197,500 in 2020.

For more information, read the full release.