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Deep within the U.S. Department of Commerce, a relatively small agency of about 500 employees operates as the nation’s economic scorekeeper.
This agency, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), is best known for producing some of the world’s most closely watched statistics, including the quarterly measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Its responsibilities extend to other data that provides a picture of the U.S. economy’s performance, from personal income and corporate profits to the intricate relationships between industries.
Among the most critical and complex datasets the BEA produces are those tracking Foreign Direct Investment, or FDI. These statistics measure the flow of international capital into the U.S. for the purpose of establishing or acquiring a lasting business interest.
This report will explore what FDI truly is, why it matters to the American economy, the legal authority that mandates its tracking, the meticulous methods the BEA uses to collect the data, and the real-world impact this investment has on American jobs, wages, and innovation.
FDI represents the tangible capital behind a new manufacturing plant in a local community, the funding for a cutting-edge research facility, or the payroll for thousands of American workers.
What is Foreign Direct Investment?
At its core, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is an investment made by an individual, company, or government from one country into a business enterprise in another country with the goal of establishing a “lasting interest.”
This concept of a lasting interest is what fundamentally distinguishes FDI from other types of international financial flows. It signifies a long-term relationship and a significant degree of influence over the management of the foreign enterprise.
The 10 Percent Rule
To provide a clear, objective, and internationally recognized standard, the BEA—along with global bodies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—defines this “lasting interest” with a specific quantitative threshold.
An FDI relationship is established when a foreign person or entity acquires, either directly or indirectly, 10 percent or more of the voting securities of an incorporated U.S. business enterprise, or an equivalent interest in an unincorporated U.S. business.
This 10 percent rule is the critical bright line that separates FDI from foreign portfolio investment. Foreign portfolio investment is passive; it involves the purchase of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets without the intent to control or influence the company’s operations.
A portfolio investor seeks a financial return, and their holdings can be sold quickly. An FDI investor, by contrast, is making a strategic, long-term commitment, often integrating the U.S. operation into its global business strategy.
This makes FDI “sticky” capital—a more stable and enduring source of financing and economic activity that is less prone to sudden withdrawal during times of market volatility. This element of control and long-term commitment is why policymakers track FDI so closely.
FDI encompasses more than a capital injection. It frequently includes the provision of valuable technology, management expertise, new skills, and equipment, creating a much deeper and more integrated link between the home and host economies.
The Many Forms of FDI
Foreign direct investment in the United States can manifest in several distinct ways, each with different implications for the economy. The BEA’s data collection system is designed to capture all of these forms.
Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A): This is the most common form of FDI expenditure, where a foreign company purchases a controlling stake (10% or more) in an existing U.S. company. While M&A activity brings a U.S. firm under foreign ownership, its immediate impact on job creation can be less direct than other forms of FDI, as it primarily represents a change of control over existing assets and employees.
Greenfield Investments: This occurs when a foreign company builds a new facility from the ground up in the United States, such as a new factory, warehouse, or research and development center.
Though they typically represent a smaller share of total annual FDI expenditures, greenfield investments are often considered the most impactful type of FDI for economic development. They directly create new productive capacity and new jobs that did not previously exist.
Analysts often watch greenfield data closely as a key indicator of foreign confidence in the U.S. business environment.
Expansions: This involves an existing foreign-owned U.S. affiliate investing to expand its current operations, for example, by adding a new production line to a factory or building an addition to an office. Like greenfield projects, expansions contribute directly to the growth of the U.S. economy’s productive capacity.
Reinvested Earnings: This is a significant but often overlooked component of FDI. It occurs when a foreign-owned U.S. affiliate earns profits in the United States and chooses to reinvest that money into its U.S. operations rather than repatriating it to its foreign parent company. This reinvestment is treated as a capital inflow from the foreign parent and is a crucial source of financing for the growth of foreign-owned businesses in the U.S.
FDI Strategies
Companies undertake FDI for various strategic reasons, which can be broadly categorized.
Horizontal FDI: This occurs when a company establishes the same type of business operation in a foreign country as it operates in its home country. A classic example is a Japanese automaker building a car assembly plant in the United States to serve the North American market directly.
Vertical FDI: This involves a company investing in a different stage of its own supply chain in another country. This can be backward vertical FDI, such as a U.S. computer manufacturer acquiring a foreign company that supplies it with essential microchips, or forward vertical FDI, like a European pharmaceutical company buying a U.S. drug distribution network.
Conglomerate FDI: This is when a company invests in a foreign business that is completely unrelated to its core business. This type of FDI is less common as it requires the investor to navigate both a new country and a new industry simultaneously.
The Legal Foundation
The Bureau of Economic Analysis does not track Foreign Direct Investment out of mere academic curiosity. Its comprehensive data collection program is rooted in a specific legal mandate from Congress, born out of a recognized need for better information to guide national policy.
This authority is primarily derived from the International Investment and Trade in Services Survey Act (IITSSA), a landmark piece of legislation passed in 1976 and amended since.
Congressional Motivation
In the mid-1970s, Congress found itself grappling with the growing influence of international investment on the U.S. economy but lacked the data to properly assess it. The legislative record shows a clear concern that “the potential consequences of international investment cannot be evaluated accurately because the United States Government lacks sufficient information.”
At the time the Act was passed, the last complete government survey of U.S. investment abroad had been conducted in 1966, a full decade earlier. Lawmakers determined that this “dearth of information” was a critical vulnerability, preventing them from making informed policy decisions regarding national security, commerce, employment, inflation, and foreign policy.
The IITSSA was therefore created to provide “clear and unambiguous authority” for the President—an authority subsequently delegated to the Department of Commerce and its agency, the BEA—to collect comprehensive and reliable data on international investment. The explicit purpose was to create a robust statistical foundation for understanding the economic significance of FDI and its impact on the nation.
Transparency vs. Confidentiality
The IITSSA is built upon a fundamental and carefully managed tension. On one hand, Congress demanded more public information to formulate sound policy. On the other hand, to ensure that businesses would provide complete and accurate data, the law had to guarantee that their sensitive proprietary information would be protected.
This led to the inclusion of one of the strongest confidentiality clauses in federal law. The Act strictly prohibits the BEA from publishing or releasing any data that could allow an individual reporting company to be identified.
This protection is absolute. The data collected under the IITSSA can only be used for statistical and analytical purposes. It is illegal for the BEA to grant another government agency—including the IRS or law enforcement—access to the data for tax, investigative, or regulatory purposes.
Any government employee who willfully discloses confidential data is subject to severe penalties, including a fine of up to $10,000 and imprisonment for up to one year. This ironclad guarantee of confidentiality is the bedrock of the entire data collection system, as it fosters the trust necessary for companies to report accurately.
Mandatory Reporting
To ensure the data is comprehensive, reporting under the IITSSA is mandatory for all U.S. businesses that meet the specified criteria. Failure to furnish required information can result in significant civil penalties, starting at $2,500 and rising to $25,000, and willful failure to comply can lead to criminal penalties.
Crucially, Congress included a specific clause to clarify the law’s intent, stating that “Nothing in this chapter is intended to restrain or deter” foreign investment in the United States, United States investment abroad, or trade in services.
This provision signals that, from its inception, the U.S. government’s official posture has been to view data collection as a tool for understanding and managing a welcome economic activity, not as a mechanism for restricting it. This pro-investment legal framework has been a key factor in establishing the United States as a stable and predictable destination for foreign capital.
How the BEA Collects FDI Data
To fulfill its legal mandate under the IITSSA, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has developed a sophisticated, multi-layered system of surveys. This framework is designed to be both comprehensive and timely, capturing a detailed picture of foreign-owned business activities in the United States.
The system is an interlocking set of quarterly, annual, and benchmark surveys, each with a specific purpose. Together, they create a system of cross-validation that ensures the accuracy and integrity of the final statistics. All surveys conducted by the BEA under this authority are mandatory and confidential.
The Survey Hierarchy
The BEA’s data collection for inward FDI—investment flowing into the U.S.—relies on four primary surveys that function as an integrated system.
BE-12 Benchmark Survey: This is the “census” of foreign direct investment in the United States. Conducted every five years (for fiscal years ending in 2 and 7), the BE-12 is the BEA’s most comprehensive survey, in terms of both the number of companies covered and the amount of information gathered.
It is designed to cover the entire universe of U.S. business enterprises in which a foreign person owns at least 10% of the voting interest. Unlike the annual surveys, reporting on the BE-12 is mandatory for all U.S. affiliates that meet the threshold, regardless of whether they are directly contacted by the BEA.
The vast amount of data collected in the benchmark survey provides the critical baseline from which the BEA derives its estimates for the intervening years.
BE-15 Annual Survey: In the years between benchmark surveys, the BEA conducts the BE-15 Annual Survey. This is a sample survey that collects detailed financial and operational data from a large subset of foreign-owned U.S. affiliates.
Generally, only entities that are contacted by the BEA are required to file a BE-15 report. The survey gathers a wide array of information, including balance sheets, income statements, property, plant, and equipment (PP&E), employment and employee compensation, merchandise trade, sales of goods and services, taxes paid, and research and development (R&D) expenditures.
This data is essential for updating the universe estimates from the BE-12 and providing a timely annual snapshot of the economic impact of FDI.
BE-13 Survey of New Foreign Direct Investment: To ensure its list of foreign-owned companies is current and to capture new investment activity as it happens, the BEA uses the BE-13 survey. This survey must be filed no later than 45 days after a transaction occurs in which a foreign entity acquires a 10% or greater voting interest in a U.S. business, establishes a new U.S. legal entity, or an existing U.S. affiliate expands its operations with a new facility.
Like the benchmark survey, reporting on the BE-13 is mandatory for any entity that meets the criteria, even if it is not contacted by the BEA. This survey is crucial for keeping the FDI universe up-to-date, which is essential for drawing accurate samples for the BE-15 and for understanding emerging investment trends.
BE-605 Quarterly Survey: To provide the most timely data on financial flows, the BEA conducts the BE-605 quarterly survey. This report is required for larger U.S. affiliates (generally those with assets, sales, or net income exceeding $60 million) and collects data on financial transactions and positions between the U.S. affiliate and its foreign parent group.
This high-frequency data is a key input for the nation’s broader international economic accounts, including the U.S. Balance of Payments.
The data from these different surveys are used to cross-validate one another. For instance, information collected on the annual BE-15 is used to verify information reported on the quarterly BE-605 surveys, creating a robust and internally consistent dataset.
BEA’s Key Inward FDI Surveys at a Glance
| Survey Form | Frequency | Who Must File | Primary Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| BE-12 Benchmark Survey | Every 5 Years | All U.S. affiliates with ≥10% foreign ownership (Mandatory for all, even if not contacted). | Provides a comprehensive “census” of all FDI activity, establishing the baseline universe for all other estimates. |
| BE-15 Annual Survey | Annually (in non-benchmark years) | A sample of U.S. affiliates (Generally required only if contacted by BEA). | Tracks detailed annual financial and operational data (sales, employment, R&D, etc.) to produce universe estimates. |
| BE-13 Survey of New FDI | Within 45 days of a transaction | Any U.S. entity involved in a new FDI transaction (Mandatory for all, even if not contacted). | Captures new investments (acquisitions, establishments, expansions) as they happen to keep the FDI universe current. |
| BE-605 Quarterly Survey | Quarterly | Larger U.S. affiliates (assets, sales, or net income >$60 million). | Tracks high-frequency financial flows and positions between U.S. affiliates and their foreign parents for the U.S. international accounts. |
Sources: BEA FDI Surveys, BEA Guide to Direct Investment Surveys, Thompson Hine BEA Reporting Requirements, Federal Register BE-15 Survey, Dechert BE-12 Benchmark Survey
The Economic Impact
The meticulous tracking of Foreign Direct Investment by the BEA is essential because FDI is a powerful engine for the U.S. economy. The data consistently reveals that the presence of foreign-owned companies on American soil translates into tangible benefits, including the creation of high-quality jobs, upward pressure on wages, a significant boost to research and innovation, and a strengthening of the nation’s industrial base.
The United States attracts more FDI than any other nation, and its impact is felt across every state and sector.
Major Job Creation
One of the most significant contributions of FDI is job creation. Foreign-owned companies are major employers in the United States, providing millions of well-paying jobs for American workers. According to the Global Business Alliance, international companies employ 8.4 million Americans.
Other analyses show that FDI supports over 5.6 million jobs directly, and when the ripple effects through the supply chain are considered, that number swells to 16 million jobs, or just over 10 percent of total U.S. employment.
This impact has been growing; between 2017 and 2022, FDI employment grew by nine percent, nearly double the five percent growth rate of the overall private sector during the same period.
The economic benefits extend far beyond the gates of the foreign-owned factory or office. This “spillover effect” is a critical, though less visible, benefit of FDI. Analysis by MIT researchers indicates that for every job created directly at a foreign-owned factory, an additional half-job is created at domestic-owned companies within the same regional supply chain.
The presence of these highly productive foreign firms stimulates demand for local suppliers and services, creating a virtuous cycle of economic activity. Removing FDI from the U.S. economy would lead to job decreases across all industries, highlighting how deeply these investments are integrated into the domestic economic fabric.
Boosting U.S. Wages
Jobs at foreign-owned U.S. affiliates add to the employment numbers and tend to be higher-paying than the national average. Data from the Department of Commerce shows that U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms pay, on average, 25 percent higher wages and salaries than the average for all U.S. establishments.
More recent data from the Global Business Alliance confirms this trend, finding that international companies pay wages and benefits that are seven percent higher than the economy-wide average.
This wage premium reflects the fact that foreign-owned firms are often more capital-intensive and operate in high-productivity sectors, requiring a highly skilled workforce. In total, these companies support an annual U.S. payroll of over $364 billion, with the average compensation per employee exceeding $68,000.
Fueling Innovation and Exports
Foreign direct investment is a critical catalyst for innovation within the United States. Foreign affiliates spend tens of billions of dollars each year on research and development (R&D) conducted at their U.S. facilities. One study from the Brookings Institution noted this figure exceeds $40 billion annually, while an earlier Department of Commerce report cited over $34 billion in R&D spending and $160 billion in new plant and equipment expenditures in a single year.
This investment in innovation helps the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in technology and science. The fact that global companies choose to locate their high-value R&D activities in the U.S. is a testament to the quality of the American workforce and research institutions.
Furthermore, these U.S.-based affiliates are powerful drivers of American exports. Leveraging their parent companies’ established global distribution networks and knowledge of foreign markets, they ship hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods and services from the U.S. to the rest of the world. U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies account for approximately 19 percent of all U.S. exports.
Strengthening Manufacturing
Nowhere is the impact of FDI more pronounced than in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Manufacturing consistently attracts the largest share of inward FDI, with over 40 percent of the total cumulative investment stock—more than $2.2 trillion—concentrated in this sector.
This investment translates directly into American manufacturing jobs. International companies support nearly 2.9 million manufacturing jobs in the United States, which accounts for a remarkable 22 percent of the country’s total manufacturing employment.
Studies have shown that the presence of FDI makes the entire U.S. manufacturing industry more productive—one analysis estimated that manufacturing productivity was 7.8 percent higher in 2019 than it would have been without the presence of foreign-owned firms.
These “transplant factories” are often more productive, invest more in technology, and pay higher wages than their domestic peers, raising the competitive bar for the entire industry.
Foreign Investment in the U.S. Today
The data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis provides a detailed and revealing snapshot of the scale and scope of foreign investment in the United States. These statistics answer the fundamental questions: How much foreign investment is there, which countries are the biggest investors, and which sectors of the U.S. economy are attracting the most capital?
Total Investment
There are two primary ways to measure FDI: the cumulative stock and the annual flow.
The FDI Position (Stock): This represents the total cumulative value of all foreign direct investment in the United States at a specific point in time. At the end of 2023, the FDI position in the U.S. reached a staggering $5.39 trillion on a historical-cost basis. This massive figure underscores the deep and long-standing financial commitment that foreign entities have made in the U.S. economy.
New FDI Expenditures (Flow): This measures the amount of money spent by foreign investors in a single year to acquire, establish, or expand U.S. businesses. In 2023, these expenditures totaled $148.8 billion. This figure was a decrease from the $206.2 billion recorded in 2022 and fell below the recent annual average, a trend that reflects broader global economic uncertainty and tighter financial conditions.
Top Investing Countries
While investment flows into the U.S. from all over the globe, a handful of developed economies are the primary sources of this capital.
Looking at the cumulative FDI position, four countries—Japan, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom—account for more than half of the total $5.39 trillion stock. Japan stands out as the single largest overseas investor, holding approximately 15 percent of the total.
When analyzing the new investment flows for 2023, a slightly different picture emerges, though it still highlights the importance of key economic partners. Canada was the top investing country in 2023 with expenditures of $53.4 billion, followed by Japan with $14.6 billion, and Sweden with $8.4 billion.
Top Foreign Direct Investor Countries in the U.S. (by Investment Position, Year-End 2023)
| Country | Investment Position (USD Billions) | Share of Total FDIUS (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | $808.5 | 15.0% |
| Canada | $683.5 | 12.7% |
| Germany | $513.2 | 9.5% |
| United Kingdom | $487.6 | 9.0% |
| Ireland | $385.1 | 7.1% |
| Netherlands | $368.1 | 6.8% |
| Switzerland | $302.7 | 5.6% |
| France | $298.1 | 5.5% |
| Luxembourg | $145.7 | 2.7% |
| Sweden | $103.5 | 1.9% |
Note: Data is based on the historical-cost position of the ultimate beneficial owner. Percentages may not sum to totals due to rounding and the exclusion of smaller investors. Sources: Global Business Alliance FDI Report, BEA Direct Investment Data
Where the Money Goes
Foreign capital is invested across the U.S. economy, but it is heavily concentrated in a few key sectors, particularly manufacturing.
Top Industries: By a wide margin, Manufacturing is the leading sector for FDI, with a cumulative investment position of $2.22 trillion, representing 41 percent of the total FDI stock at the end of 2023. Within manufacturing, the chemical industry (including pharmaceuticals) and the computer and electronic products industry are major recipients.
Other significant sectors for FDI include Finance and Insurance ($574 billion), Wholesale Trade (10%), and Information ($261 billion).
Top States: The distribution of FDI is also geographically concentrated. For new investment expenditures in 2023, Missouri received the largest amount (though the specific value is suppressed by the BEA for confidentiality), followed by California ($12.8 billion), New Jersey ($12.1 billion), and Texas ($10.1 billion).
However, when measured by the share of the workforce employed by foreign-owned companies, a different set of states emerges. South Carolina leads the nation, with 9.8 percent of its private-sector jobs dependent on FDI. It is followed by Delaware (9.0%), Kentucky (8.8%), and Michigan and New Hampshire (tied at 8.6%).
Top Industries for Foreign Direct Investment in the U.S. (by Investment Position, Year-End 2023)
| Industry Sector | Investment Position (USD Billions) | Share of Total FDIUS (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | $2,220.0 | 41.2% |
| Finance and Insurance | $574.0 | 10.7% |
| Wholesale Trade | $539.0 | 10.0% |
| Information | $261.0 | 4.8% |
| Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services | $245.0 | 4.5% |
| Real Estate and Rental and Leasing | $210.0 | 3.9% |
| Retail Trade | $199.0 | 3.7% |
| Depository Institutions (Banking) | $195.0 | 3.6% |
Note: Data is based on the historical-cost position. Percentages may not sum to totals due to rounding and the exclusion of smaller sectors. Sources: Global Business Alliance FDI Report, BEA Direct Investment Data
Data Limitations
The statistics on Foreign Direct Investment produced by the BEA are the most comprehensive and authoritative available for the United States. They are indispensable for policymakers, businesses, and researchers. However, to use this data responsibly, it is crucial to understand its inherent limitations.
These are often unavoidable consequences of its legal mandate, the complex structure of the global economy, and practical resource constraints.
Confidentiality and Data Suppression
The most significant limitation on the publicly available FDI data stems directly from the BEA’s legal mandate under the IITSSA to protect the confidentiality of individual reporting companies. To prevent the disclosure of proprietary information, the BEA must suppress, or withhold, data cells where the information could be used to identify a specific firm.
This typically happens in geographic areas or industry sectors where there are only one or two dominant foreign-owned companies. For example, in the BEA’s report on new FDI for 2023, the total investment expenditure for the state of Missouri—the top destination for new FDI that year—was suppressed. Similarly, the total for the transportation and warehousing industry, one of the largest sectors for new investment, was also suppressed.
While this practice is essential for securing the business cooperation needed to collect accurate data in the first place, it can be a source of frustration for state and local economic developers or industry analysts seeking highly granular data for their specific region or sector.
Enterprise vs. Establishment Data
A historical challenge in using FDI data for sub-national analysis has been the distinction between an enterprise and an establishment. The BEA’s surveys collect data from the enterprise, which is the overall company. However, a single enterprise may have multiple establishments—factories, offices, retail stores—located in different states.
In the past, if a company headquartered in New York reported its total U.S. employment, it was difficult to know how many of those jobs were in New York versus at its manufacturing plants in Ohio or Michigan.
The BEA has been actively working to address this limitation and improve the quality of its state-level data. Through data-sharing agreements, the BEA now links its enterprise-level survey data with establishment-level data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW).
This allows for a more accurate allocation of employment and other economic activity to the specific states where it occurs. For instance, a 2023 methodology improvement for estimating state-level employment at newly acquired businesses now uses BLS data to more accurately distribute jobs for large, multi-state companies.
Tracking Modern Multinationals
The modern global economy presents formidable challenges for statistical agencies. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) often have highly complex legal and financial structures designed to optimize their global operations and tax liabilities. This can include the use of holding companies and Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) located in countries with low or zero tax rates.
As a result, the path of a financial flow may not perfectly mirror the location of real production. An investment in a U.S. factory might be routed financially through a subsidiary in a third country, making it difficult to identify the Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO)—the entity at the top of the ownership chain that ultimately owns and controls the investment.
While the BEA makes extensive efforts to track investment back to the UBO, the complexity of these structures means that FDI statistics, which capture the financing aspects of MNEs, can sometimes be an imperfect proxy for where multinational production physically occurs.
Resource Constraints
Like all government agencies, the BEA operates with a finite budget and staff. These resource constraints can have a direct impact on the availability of data. For example, the BEA has announced that, due to resource constraints, it will discontinue several detailed data tables on the sales, net income, and balance sheets of new foreign direct investments starting in July 2025.
This represents a tangible loss of publicly available information for researchers and analysts. There is an inherent time lag in the production of these detailed statistics. Collecting data from thousands of companies, verifying its accuracy, ensuring confidentiality, and compiling it into comprehensive accounts is a meticulous process.
Consequently, the most detailed and final data for a given calendar year are often not released until well into the following year or even later. While the BEA provides preliminary estimates and more timely quarterly data, users seeking the most comprehensive statistics must contend with this necessary lag.
Who Uses This Data
The vast and detailed datasets on Foreign Direct Investment compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis are a vital public resource, forming the bedrock of a complex data ecosystem that informs critical decisions across government, the private sector, and academia.
The BEA’s role is that of a foundational data provider, supplying the objective, reliable numbers that other stakeholders analyze, contextualize, and deploy to shape policy and drive economic activity.
Government Decision-Making
Federal Government: At the national level, BEA statistics are indispensable. The White House Council of Economic Advisers uses the data to brief the President and senior officials on the state of the U.S. economy and its position in the world. Congressional committees rely on these statistics when drafting legislation related to trade, taxation, and international competitiveness.
Furthermore, the data is a critical input for the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews inward FDI transactions for potential national security risks. Without the BEA’s baseline data on who is investing and in which industries, CFIUS’s analytical mission would be significantly hampered.
State and Local Governments: Perhaps the most active users of BEA’s FDI data are state and local Economic Development Organizations (EDOs). These organizations are on the front lines of competing to attract new business investment to their communities. They use the BEA’s state-level data to:
- Identify Trends: Pinpoint which countries and industries are currently investing heavily in the U.S. and in their specific region, allowing them to target their outreach efforts more effectively.
- Benchmark Performance: Compare their state’s FDI performance against that of neighboring or competitor states to identify strengths and weaknesses.
- Inform Strategy: Develop long-term strategies for attracting investment by understanding which of their state’s industry clusters are most appealing to foreign companies.
Private Sector and Research
Private Businesses: Companies across the country use BEA’s industry-level data for market research, to analyze competitive landscapes, and to make strategic decisions about their own investments, expansions, and hiring plans.
Advocacy and Research: The BEA’s data fuels a wide range of analysis by third parties. A prime example is the Global Business Alliance (GBA), a trade association representing international companies operating in the U.S. (formerly known as the Organization for International Investment, or OFII).
The GBA relies heavily on BEA data to produce its own widely cited state-by-state reports and national analyses that highlight the positive economic contributions of FDI in terms of jobs, wages, and innovation. These reports translate the BEA’s statistical data into accessible advocacy tools used to engage with policymakers and the public.
Academic researchers use the aggregated public data, as well as the confidential microdata available through secure Federal Statistical Research Data Centers, to conduct in-depth studies on the economic effects of globalization and multinational corporations.
International organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) incorporate BEA’s data into their global economic reports, using it to compare the economic performance of the United States with that of other countries.
This demonstrates a powerful feedback loop. The BEA produces objective data. State EDOs use that data to refine their strategies and attract new investment. Advocacy groups like the GBA use it to make the case for pro-investment policies. The success of these efforts is then captured in subsequent BEA surveys, providing new data for the next round of analysis and policymaking.
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