Chinese investment in the US is unlikely to recover meaningfully from its mid-2010s collapse even if President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump reach a bilateral deal when they meet in Beijing next month, according to a report released on Thursday.
Rhodium Group, an American research firm that tracks China’s cross-border investment, said Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the United States had “fallen significantly from its 2016 peak, and remained at low levels for the past five years” and was “unlikely to return to those levels”.
In 2024, China ranked 17th among countries by new FDI spending in the US at US$589 million, against US$30.1 billion for top investor Ireland, according to data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Rhodium said Italian companies had invested four times more in the US than Chinese ones over the past five years.
A bilateral trade deal could help revive Chinese FDI to some extent