Chinese FDI in the US has fallen significantly from its 2016 peak and remained at low levels for the past five years. Should Xi and Trump find their way to the negotiating table this spring, revived Chinese investment will likely feature on the agenda. However, the reality of the bilateral relationship makes a meaningful rebound of Chinese FDI in the US unlikely.
Chinese investment in the US has fallen significantly from its peak and is unlikely to return to those levels. Total Chinese investment in the US over the last ten years—which includes a strong spike in 2016 and 2017 resulting from China's relaxed capital controls—amounted to around $190 billion, less than a fifth of the $1 trillion figure floated during the Madrid talks. Such astronomical figures are not necessarily meant to be taken literally, but the potential for increased Chinese investment in the US as part of the ever-shifting landscape of negotiations between the two countries is worth considering. To weigh the possibility of a new investment push, we lay out the timeline of China’s investment in the US, both over the last decade and the last few years.
Chinese FDI in the US started to expand meaningfully after 2010. At the time, Chinese companies were purchasing large trophy assets: WH Group acquired Smithfield Foods in 2013 and Dalian Wanda purchased AMC Theaters in 2014. In 2014, China loosened its capital controls, resulting in a significant increase of Chinese investment in the US of almost $60 billion as investors sought to move money abroad (Figure 1). After Beijing retightened controls in 2017, investment fell back to pre-2014 levels. Flows further declined after 2018 due to regulatory scrutiny and the impact of the global pandemic.
While the trajectory of Chinese FDI in the US broadly mirrors the global trend of China’s global outbound FDI, the decrease was more pronounced in the US than other OECD economies (Figure 2). The primary reason is that Chinese investments had been concentrated in areas most affected by political headwinds from both sides. For one, investments in real estate, gaming, and entertainment were blacklisted in 2017 by Beijing. From the US side, technology investments and other strategic acquisitions came under sharper political and regulatory scrutiny. The passage of the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) in 2018 further expanded the scope of reviews by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Since 2022, China’s global outbound FDI has recovered somewhat, in part driven by a surge in clean transport and energy investments. These investments also started to shape up in the United States: Between 2022 and 2024, Chinese firms announced a series of manufacturing projects worth billions in the electric vehicle (EV) and solar value chains. However, as of Q1 2026, more than half of Chinese clean-tech investment in the US announced since 2022 has been canceled, paused, or delayed (Figure 3).
There are several factors behind this, including a slower EV market, tariff uncertainty, and reduced policy support, including the expansion of Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions, compounded by local and congressional political pressure against Chinese investors. The battery sector has been hit the hardest, with around 80% of investment reportedly canceled or suspended in 2025, leaving Gotion’s $2 billion Illinois project as the only large-scale Chinese EV battery plant still moving forward. The solar sector has been hit hard as well, with most announcements worth more than $1 billion delayed or canceled. This includes the Maxeon and Ebron Solar plants in New Mexico, which accounted for around half of the total announced value in the sector. While smaller-scale solar projects and investments by battery-material suppliers have so far been less affected, they are not large enough to offset the broader slowdown.
Since 2025, tariff pressure has redirected some Chinese investment toward other manufacturing sectors, but the numbers remain well below pre-pandemic levels. Less than $3 billion was announced in 2025, the lowest on record since the mid-2010s peak. It has drawn little in the way of new investors. What little activity exists is largely driven by Chinese-owned American firms expanding their existing manufacturing capacity. Notable examples include Haier-owned GE Appliances, which announced a $3 billion investment in its US operations, and WH Group-owned Smithfield Foods, which committed $1.3 billion to expanding its South Dakota plant. Acquisitions remain rare and are focused on less controversial consumer goods, for example Centurium Capital’s $400 million acquisition of Blue Bottle Coffee.
Policymakers weighing the promise of increased Chinese investment also need to consider just how China’s relevance as a source of FDI for the US has faded. Other countries have not only invested more in the US, but their investments have yielded significantly more local jobs than projects by Chinese companies. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on first-year FDI expenditures showed China among the top five investor nations in the US in 2016. However, the collapse of Chinese investment in subsequent years and the boom in overall FDI into the US have marginalized China as an investor country: In 2024, China was ranked 17th in new first-year FDI expenditures. In the past five years, Italian companies have invested four times as much in the US as Chinese companies (Figure 4).
Chinese companies in the US punch well below their weight in other metrics as well, given the size of the country’s economy. Total assets by US affiliates of PRC companies have stayed roughly flat since 2017 and their sales plateaued for several years starting in 2017, then dipped 14% in 2020-2022 compared to the previous period. Chinese companies also employ few people in the US: Even at the peak of the investment boom, Chinese firms only employed 229,000 US workers in 2017, five times less than those UK firms employed. Since then, workers employed by Chinese affiliates in the US fell to only 126,000 by 2022, fewer Americans than Wells Fargo alone employs. China is also a significant outlier when it comes to the ratio of exports to the US and local jobs created. It was the largest single exporter of goods to the US in 2022, but its local employment impacts were in the same group as Singapore or India (Figure 5). That ratio has likely further worsened by 2026.
Policy headwinds were the key reason Chinese FDI in the US has slowed to a trickle in recent years—and there’s still a stiff breeze. A bilateral trade deal could help revive Chinese FDI to some extent, however, it is highly unlikely that it would catalyze a new investment boom in the US. Bilateral negotiations could provide some guardrails, but it would not address the core reasons for the slowdown, which are deeply embedded in US-China strategic competition and distrust.
On one side of the equation, Washington’s national and economic security concerns will continue to limit Chinese participation in core areas of the US economy, including infrastructure, critical technologies, and sectors with significant data exposure. Aside from CFIUS reviews for acquisitions, Chinese firms are also facing significant restrictions through new supply chain security measures such as the Information and Communications Technology and Services (ICTS) rules and FEOC provisions for subsidies and tax benefits. State and local rules that limit ownership of certain assets add to uncertainty for Chinese firms operating in the US.
On the Chinese side, Beijing continues to utilize administrative controls to limit the overall levels of capital outflows for macroprudential reasons and prevent investment in red-flag sectors not aligned with national priorities such as real estate or entertainment. More importantly, Chinese regulators now treat outbound investment in greenfield manufacturing projects as a potential channel for technology leakage, industrial erosion, and job losses. In this context, scrutiny of overseas investment has further intensified, and any US-bound investment in relevant sectors would face careful review to ensure it does not create technology leakage risk or undermines other national development goals.
These structural realities make a return to the levels of Chinese investment in the US seen in 2016 highly unlikely.