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By Rebecca Patterson
Ms. Patterson is an economist who has held senior positions at JPMorgan Chase and Bridgewater Associates.
As the dust — perhaps — starts to settle after four frenetic months of trade negotiations, the biggest win for America might be a potential windfall of investment from overseas.
In an effort to avoid even higher tariffs, Japan, the European Union and South Korea loosely pledged to directly invest a total of $1.5 trillion in the United States, equivalent to what the government spent on Social Security benefits last year. We don’t know exactly when the money will arrive, or if some of it simply replaces investments that might have happened anyway. Even with a healthy haircut, the pledges sound impressive, and could be greater than the new global direct investment in the United States over the past six years.
