Foreign Direct Investment: Review of Commerce Department Reports and Data-Sharing Activities

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Commerce's first three annual reports on foreign direct investment in the United States (FDIUS) and governmental efforts to improve the quality of FDIUS data, focusing on: (1) the extent to which Commerce's reports fulfilled legislative requirements and addressed prior GAO recommendations; (2) how FDIUS data is obtained; (3) the status of data sharing between the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the Bureau of Census and between BEA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS); and (4) the extent to which implementing legislation has improved public information on FDIUS.