Chinese investments in the U.S. have plummeted since Trump's first term. The trend is unlikely to reverse

cnbc.com:

Chinese investments in the U.S. have dramatically declined since Donald Trump's first term. This trend is unlikely to reverse as Trump returns to the White House, analysts said.

Trump has threatened additional tariffs on Chinese goods soon after his inauguration on Monday, building on an increasingly tough U.S. stance on Beijing.

«That's probably the last thing on Trump's mind, is trying to incentivize [Chinese companies] to invest here,» said Rafiq Dossani, an economist at U.S.-based think tank RAND.

«There's an ideological mismatch. All the rhetoric is, keep China out of the U.S., let their products come in, which are low-end,» he said in an interview earlier this month. But other than that, «don't, don't let them come in.»

In the last several weeks, Emirati property giant Damac has pledged $20 billion to build data centers in the U.S., while SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son announced a $100 billion investment for artificial intelligence development in the U.S. over Trump's four-year term.

Chinese investment deals in the U.S. have slowed drastically, according to the latest American Enterprise Institute data. Just $860 million flowed into the U.S. in the first six months of 2024, following $1.66 billion in 2023. That's down sharply from $46.86 billion in 2017, when Trump began his first term.

At the peak, Chinese companies had made high-profile U.S. acquisitions, such as buying the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. But regulators on both sides have stemmed the flow.

«Chinese investment in the U.S. has slowed down dramatically since Beijing tightened control over capital outflows in 2017, followed by a series of regulatory policies in the U.S. aimed at excluding investments in certain sectors,» Danielle Goh, senior research