Few EMs at risk from a major drop in US FDI

US foreign direct investment flows into most major EMs aren’t particularly large and a significant portion are concentrated in the mining and financial sectors. These are unlikely to be disrupted even if President Trump continues to encourage US manufacturing firms to invest at home. While few EMs provide a breakdown of FDI inflows by their source, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis produces detailed data on outward FDI that helps to give us a sense of the scale of US investment flows. These suggests that aside from a few countries (notably Chile, Egypt, Mexico and Malaysia), US FDI flows into major EMs have been fairly small over recent years at well under 0.5% of their GDP. As such, the loss of these flows shouldn’t have a major economic impact.