These investments cover a wide spectrum, ranging from Japanese investment in American real estate and businesses to American investments in South America and Southeast Asia.
Investment is usually mutually beneficial from an economic standpoint.
Difficulty arises from balancing the economic gains against moral or ethical concessions, as in the case of overseas sweatshops, and the sticky problem of ensuring that true costs are reflected, as in the case of environmental damage. One common drawback to foreign investment was exactly the fact that it was foreign. Business was then accountable to two sets of rules that could have been very dissimilar. Foreign countries were subject to unforeseeable political developments. Foreign investment has always entailed a higher risk, but with that risk comes the possibility of much better returns.