Is the rest of the world buying the United States?

The United States has a continuous external deficit, financed by capital inflows. In the past, this mainly involved purchases of US government debt securities by non-residents, while the United States made direct investments (in corporate capital) in the rest of the world. The result was that, while the United States had a growing net external debt, ownership income flowing from the rest of the world to the United States was much greater than that flowing from the United states to the rest of the world, because the return on direct investment made in the rest of the world by US companies was much higher than the interest rate on US Treasuries . But the growing attractiveness of the United States to foreign companies may have changed this situation. If companies located in the United States increasingly belong to non-residents, the ownership income derived from these companies and paid to the rest of the world will increase, and the positive balance between the income from capital held in the rest of the world by US residents and that paid by Americans to the rest of the world will gradually disappear. We seek to determine whether we can see this development in recent years. The stock of shares or direct investments held by non-residents in the United States has represented an increasing fraction of the US gross external debt since 2012; capital income paid to the rest of the world by the United States has since 2018 represented an increasing proportion of the capital income received by the United States from the rest of the world.