Greenfield Foreign Investment in US Continues to Collapse

A man walks past a company logo at the headquarters of the world's largest semiconductor maker TSMC in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Jan. 29, 2021. TSMC has started building a semiconductor factory in Arizona. SAM YEH/AFP via Getty Images

The United States has a poor track record of attracting global investors, with foreign investments to new facilities having fallen sharply over the past few decades.

The value of greenfield foreign direct investments (FDI) relative to the size of the U.S. economy has dropped by 96 percent since the 1990s, according to a recent analysis from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a technology think tank. Greenfield FDIs are foreign investments in newly constructed or expanded facilities.