Foreign Ownership Under Scrutiny After Ports Dispute

WASHINGTON – The furor over efforts by an Arab company to buy American 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.America 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 American government’s publicly traded debt. As of January, some $2.19 trillion in Treasury securities were 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$1.53 trillion, 8.2 percent more than in 2003.Arab investment has gotten the most scrutiny of late because of the now-withdrawn bid by a Dubai-based company to buy operations at six major American ports. But statistics show that Arab investments represent only a fraction of the total direct investment in America by foreigners.European nations accounted for $977 billion, or two-thirds, of the $1.53 trillion of foreign direct investment, according to figures compiled by the Commerce Department.A bill by the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, would bar foreign ownership of American infrastructure deemed critical to the 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 American economy.Consider that 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 American troops, while French-owned Sodexho provides meals for the troops at a number of military installations.Nearly one in five American oil refineries is owned by foreign companies. Foreign companies also have a sizable presence in running power plants, chemical factories, and water treatment facilities in America.“People don’t understand how integrated the U.S. economy has become with the global economy, how dependent we have become on other nations,” the president of the Economic Strategy Institute, Clyde Prestowitz, said.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,” the head of the Organization for International Investment, Todd Malan, said. The Washington group represents foreign companies that do business in America.To the puzzlement of some economists, the current debate centers on direct foreign investment, the most stable type of investment. Yet the far larger share of foreign investment is in Treasury securities, corporate bonds and stocks.If foreigners suddenly decided to reduce their holdings of these assets, the dollar could plunge in value, interest rates could soar, and stock prices could suffer a big blow.

Foreign Ownership Under Scrutiny After Ports Dispute

Foreign Ownership Under Scrutiny After Ports Dispute

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