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For example, U.S. national policy makers have worked to make sure sensitive military and defense technology and production remain with American companies.

After 9/11, concerns grew that foreign ownership of U.S. infrastructure could increase our vulnerability to terrorist attacks. One example is the heated debate triggered by the 2006 purchase of a company that ran U.S. ports by the United Arab Emirates-owned company Dubai Ports World. (Dubai Ports eventually sold its interests to a U.S. company.) More recently, globalization of the nuclear industry and the weak U.S. economy have attracted significant levels of foreign investment in the U.S. nuclear industry

The Atomic Energy Act prohibits the NRC from issuing a license to any entity that the Commission believes is “owned, controlled or dominated by an alien, a foreign corporation or foreign government.” Broadly speaking, the foreign ownership prohibition protects the “common defense and security” of the United States, even though this may prevent some nations from participating in U.S. nuclear joint ventures.

the interest of foreign companies in buying U.S. critical infrastructure assets; that interest is now growing again, and the Obama administration is grappling with how to balance the promotion of commerce with the bolstering of security

The issue is coming back to the fore as foreign investors once again try to buy American industrial assets. The Obama administration has thus been forced to grapple with how to protect national security while promoting economic recovery.

The New York Times’s Eric Lipton wrote last month that in early December, the administration had threatened to block the proposed takeover by the Chinese government of a tiny Nevada gold mining company, according to executives for the company,

Office of Investment Security   Page ContentCommittee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) CFIUS is an inter-agency committee authorized to review transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.  CFIUS operates pursuant to section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended by the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA) (section 721) and as implemented by Executive Order 11858, as amended, and regulations at 31 C.F.R. Part 800.  The CFIUS process has been the subject of significant reforms over the past several years.  These include numerous improvements in internal CFIUS procedures, enactment of FINSA in July 2007, amendment of Executive Order 11858 in January 2008, revision of the CFIUS regulations in November 2008, and publication of guidance on CFIUS’s national security considerations in December 2008. Further information about each of these reforms is available via the links to the right.

hese complex arrangements indicate that China’s expansion of overseas-energy assets is a long term goal and that it is increasingly interested in securing Chinese outward investments from its international partners.

A couple of years ago Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a 75-year lease for 157 miles of the Indiana Toll Road for $3.8 billion, thus supposedly funding the State’s transportation needs for ten years

They saw Daniels’ move as giving away the State’s birthright

When the leases are to foreign organizations the backlash is particularly harsh. For example, in Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has privatized some Texas highways, was presented with a two-year moratorium upon new projects by the relatively conservative State Legislature. That throws a wrench in Perry’s plans for the Trans-Texas Highway, which is supposed to be a multi-lane facility, with high-speed trains in the middle, to carry especially trucks from Mexico all the way to Kansas City. The public is angry. They see Perry as giving away Texas sovereignty.

demands immediate congressional attention to examine any national security implications and to clarify present and future control issues before the deal receives regulatory approval.

while the U.S. economy will expand by perhaps 40% in constant dollar terms, net foreign ownership of U.S. assets – stocks, bonds and property in the hands mostly of China and other emerging Asian countries -- will expand fivefold. This is the ownership society, though with others doing the owning.

The Chinese government has directed its Anshan Iron and Steel Group to directly invest in the United States. On May 17, 2010, the company announced a joint venture with Steel Development Co. of Amory, Miss., to build up to five new steel plants in the United States. "Anshan's investment in SDC is the direct result of China's industrial policies," notes Wiley Rein. The 100-percent state-owned enterprise became China's fourth largest steel producer "through government mandated mergers and the receipt of massive government subsidies." China's 2009 "Revitalization Plan," "explicitly identifies Anshan as a recipient of extensive government support in order to strengthen its international competitiveness and to assist Anshan in acquiring strategic resources and establishing operations abroad. . . Anshan is now investing in the U.S. steel market, with the full force and encouragement of the Chinese government." China is stepping up its global strategy. China's government said it invested $43.3 billion overseas in 2009. Through June 2010, overseas investment had reached $55.2 billion. The OECD says these figures are "substantially" underestimated. Chinese foreign mergers and acquisitions have increased by more than 50 percent in the first half of 2010, according to report from China Daily Online. "Chinese investment into the United States jumped 360 percent in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period last year," according to the Wiley Rein report. "In 2009, Chinese enterprises announced new direct investment in the United States of approximately $5 billion, up from $500 million in 2008, and despite a significant global downturn in such investments. Moreover, Chinese firms acquired or announced that they were starting more than 50 U.S. companies in 2009."

Sinopec, China’s second-largest oil company by market capitalisation, unveiled a $2.5bn deal with Oklahoma-based Devon Energy to invest in five new development areas from Ohio to Alabama.

International groups are still keen to increase their exposure to unconventional US energy resources despite the environmental controversy over “fracking”, the injection of water, sand and chemicals into wells to crack rocks and release oil and gas.

Foreign companies have been shifting their focus from gas, prices for which have plunged, to oil. Devon’s deal with Sinopec also reflects Chinese companies’ hopes that techniques pioneered in the US could be used to develop China’s own resources.