Foreigners’ share of America growing
WASHINGTON – The furor over efforts by an Arab company to buy U.S. port operations has focused attention on a little-noticed economic fact of life: America increasingly is foreign-owned.
From the ritzy Essex House hotel in Manhattan, owned by the Dubai Investment Group, to the nationwide chains of Caribou Coffee and Church’s Chicken, owned by another company serving Arab investors, foreigners are buying bigger and bigger chunks of the country.
The U.S. must borrow more than $2 billion per day from foreigners to finance its huge trade deficits. In 2005, for example, there was a record deficit of $805 billion in the current account, the broadest measure of trade.
Foreigners sell their televisions, cars and oil to Americans and hold dollars in return. Those dollars are invested in stocks, bonds and other assets, including real estate and factories.
Foreigners already own half of the U.S. government’s publicly traded debt. As of January, some $2.19 trillion in Treasury securities was in the hands of central banks, including China and Japan, and private investors abroad.
At the end of 2004, the total foreign direct investment in this country – actual factories, office buildings and other tangible assets as opposed to stocks and bonds – came to $1.53 trillion, 8.2 percent more than in 2003. That investment shows up in all 50 states.
Arab investment has gotten the most scrutiny of late because of the now-withdrawn bid by a Dubai-based company to buy operations at six major U.S. ports. But statistics show that Arab investments represent only a fraction of the total direct investment in the U.S. by foreigners.
European nations accounted for $977 billion of the $1.53 trillion of foreign direct investment, according to figures compiled by the Commerce Department.
By contrast, Arab countries in the Middle East accounted for $9.3 billion, led by $4.7 billion in investment from Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates was second among Middle East Arab countries with $1.8 billion in investments, according to the data.
DP World of Dubai said last week it intends to sell its U.S. operations to an American-owned company. But that has not stopped some members of Congress from seeking to overhaul the way such deals are reviewed by a secretive government panel.
A bill by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, would bar foreign ownership of U.S. infrastructure deemed critical to national security.
Opponents say his proposal would mean the fire sale of billions of dollars of assets now in foreign hands and end up hurting the U.S. economy.
For more than a decade, French tire maker Michelin has been the exclusive supplier of tires for NASA’s space shuttles. DSM, a Dutch company, makes body armor for U.S. troops. Nearly one in five U.S. oil refineries is foreign-owned.
“People don’t understand how integrated the U.S. economy has become with the global economy, how dependent we have become on other nations,” said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think tank.
Some analysts believe such realities are getting lost as politicians try to respond to growing anxiety about the trade deficits, the loss of nearly 3 million manufacturing jobs since mid-2000, immigration problems and the threat of more terrorist attacks.
“We have to be very careful that we don’t overreact in the legislative process and enact economic policy masquerading as national security policy,” said Todd Malan, head of the Organization for International Investment.