U.S. Energy, Motor Vehicles Attracting Foreign Investors
WASHINGTON — Seeking to capitalize on America’s shale gas boom, foreign companies are making major investments in the U.S. energy sector, a new PPI study shows. And while foreign investors still see making motor vehicles in the United States as good business, they seem less willing to place their bets on America’s greatly heralded manufacturing renaissance.
These are key findings of “Non-US Investment Heroes: Foreign Companies Betting on America” by PPI Economist Diana G. Carew. In the first study of its kind, Carew identified the top non-US based companies in three key industries – energy, motor vehicles, and industrial manufacturing – by their level of U.S. investment in 2011 and 2012.
In energy, the top company investing in America by their cumulative 2011 and 2012 capital expenditures was BP, followed by Shell, Statoil, and Total.
In the two remaining industries, we could not produce a ranking due to limitations in publicly available financial data. Still, we identified six motor vehicle and industrial manufacturers that had significant U.S. investment in 2011 and 2012 (listed in alphabetical order): BMW, Honda, Robert Bosch, Samsung, ThyssenKrupp, and Volvo. To obtain these results, PPI analyzed publicly available financial statements.
In general, the report found that foreign direct investment in the United States is still well below its pre-recession high of $310 billion. “We need investment from overseas to propel the U.S. economy, but we continue to be stuck in an investment drought,” Carew says.
However, as Carew notes, a paucity of good data on investment from many non-U.S. based companies, particularly those outside of the energy sector, presents a challenge for designing effective U.S. investment policy.
This report is part of our “Investment Heroes” series, and follows from our 2012 report “U.S. Investment Heroes: Who’s Betting on America’s Future?”
