Thoughts on FDI in Latin America

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean issued a new report with new data for FDI in 2013.

--interestingly, U.S. FDI dropped for Brazil and Mexico but increased for Central America. I don't have a good explanation for that and they don't seem to try and account for it.

--at the same time, Mexico saw an increase largely because of U.S. companies interested in beer.

--despite all the talk about China taking over, its FDI has remained unchanged (at about $10 billion) since 2010. For Asian countries it is only third, behind Japan and South Korea.

--the largest contraction was in Chile but I think only because it had grown so much in such a short time so I think 2012 was just an unusually high amount in comparison. In addition, the report notes that it was a tough year for mining.

--Bolivia saw a 35% increase over 2012 and higher than any amount since 2008. Because of course it's a evil socialist place where capitalism is dead. Or something like that. On the flip side, it's almost all hydrocarbons so doesn't represent any diversification.

--Brazil is sucking down FDI like nobody's business. President Rousseff gets plenty of flak but clearly she has made Brazil a place people want to invest.

--In case you had any doubts, few see Venezuela as a place where they want to risk any money.

--For FDI, currency fluctuations seemed to have an impact only in Argentina and Venezuela, where investors lost.

I'm going to incorporate some of this into my U.S. and Latin American Relations 2nd edition.