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Institutionalizing neoliberalism: CFIUS and the governance of inward foreign direct investment in the United States since 1975

ABSTRACT The United States has been one of the world's premier destinations for inward foreign direct investment (IFDI) since the 1970s, yet research remains limited on the origins of the domestic institutions that govern IFDI flows. This article focuses on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an executive body created in 1975 ostensibly to stand sentry on the US's ‘open’ investment door. Previous accounts have explained CFIUS's origins in terms of an inter-branch conflict between an ‘internationalist’ Executive and a ‘protectionist’ Congress, but these accounts are far from comprehensive. Based on new archival evidence as well as a broad review of congressional-hearing transcripts, government reports and trade publications, this article finds that existing analyses underestimate the influence of internationally oriented segments of capital, overlook the emergence of key conflicts within the Executive and disregard the specific economic ideas that motivated policy-makers to establish CFIUS and later reform it. These findings buttress the article's conclusion that CFIUS represents not merely a generic case of inter-branch conflict, but a concrete case of neoliberal state-building.