This Citi GPS report focuses on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the U.S. and how the rapidly shifting dynamics of global capital movements might affect it.
Whereas most other regions saw declines in 2024 vs 2023, the U.S. enjoyed a double-digit growth of 13%, while also recording the highest growth in greenfield projects. It is also worth noting that while the U.S. was the largest recipient country of the global FDI inflows, it was also the biggest giver by far in terms of investments abroad in 2023.
The report looks at what led the U.S. to capture a larger share of global FDI flows in recent years as well as the prospects for U.S. FDI going forward, particularly considering the Trump administration's America First policies.
We'll look at what the data tells us about how the dynamics of global trade have been shifting in recent years. What are some of the limiting factors for FDI?
How should companies thinking about FDI into the U.S. think about it? What do they need to know?
Citi clients are always looking at their supply chains, often moving them from one part of the world to another, seeking resilience first and foremost. The pandemic drove greater awareness that having a dependence on only one part of the world for supply chains represented a risk. That trend has continued, more recently, most obviously due to geopolitical shifts.
Given the prominent role of the U.S. in global FDI flows, we also look at sectoral and state-level data. And we explore how U.S. FDI is broken down by country of origin.
Some of the key findings of this GPS report include:
| The U.S. was the largest recipient country of global FDI inflows in 2023, attracting $311 billion inward investments. | |
International trade in goods and services deficit was $122.7 billion in February, down from $130.7 billion in January, but still above $98.1 billion in December 2024. | |
| China, Mexico and Vietnam were the top three countries that the U.S. had the highest deficits with. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the U.S. achieved the most trade surpluses with Netherlands, Australia and Singapore. | |
| The Rust Belt states have enjoyed outsized capital injections benefiting several industrial sectors, especially the manufacturing sector over the past decade. | |
| Among countries which contributed the most towards job creation, Canada and the UK lead the way with aggregated FDI-induced employment from the two nations totalling over 2 million since 2014. | |
| In the years before the pandemic, FDI to the EU regularly exceeded that to the U.S. However, in the years since the pandemic, the U.S. has moved well ahead. The U.S. share of global FDI flows has stepped up from roughly 15% to 25%. | |
| The manufacturing sector stands out as the largest recipient, with $380 billion in FDI flows since 2022, or roughly 42% of total flows. | |
| The individual state that received the largest flows is California – also the largest state by both U.S. population and output. California received just over 8.5% of total U.S. FDI flows. | |
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