The geostrategic upheavals of the last five years have already completely reconfigured both foreign investments in Spain and those that the country's businessmen make abroad. The disconnection with Russia is total and is accompanied by a distancing from China that the United States and Germany take advantage of, while there is less harmony with the United Kingdom after Brexit. Experts pessimistically warn that the economy is already following in the footsteps of the progressive polarization between world powers.
“There is a growing fragmentation of the global economy, although we cannot speak of deglobalization,” explains Federico Steinberg, principal researcher at the Elcano Royal Institute, from Washington. After the change in the “dominant ideas”, the effects “end up appearing in the economy”, although they take time to materialize. This is what the data has just shown in 2023, with “the United States and Europe reducing their risks vis-à-vis China.”
A few days ago, the Government reported that foreign investments fell by 18% in Spain last year, and Spanish investments abroad fell by 43%. However, these percentages are full of nuances if the disaggregated data just published by the Secretary of State for Commerce is analyzed, in which it can be seen that the trend changes radically depending on the relationship with each country.
Last year something of a new global investment order emerged. The United States dedicated 8,146 million euros to Spain, 119% more than in 2019, and Germany almost 3,000 million, 190% more, while China cut investment by 27%, to 131 million. 3,693 million arrived from the United Kingdom, 32% less. “It is not very clear who is a friend of the United States, but it is clear who is the enemy,” says Steinberg.
Javier Díaz-Giménez, professor at IESE, warns that factors such as increases in interest rates also influence, but he agrees on the importance of the moment. “Before, with money you could buy anything anywhere in the world” and now “you have to be a friend to enter strategic sectors of a country.” The world, he points out, is torn between a “cooperative” environment and a “conflictive” one, and “there are many operations on hold due to uncertainty.”
“The international situation has become enormously tense in the last two years,” says José María Peredo, professor of International Politics at the European University of Valencia. The investment relationship with the United States is reinforced, but from his point of view, “China will not give up the European market for Russia” because in its case “politics and economic decisions are not always linked.”
Spanish investments abroad have had a similar pattern, with a strong increase in flows to the United States, up to 5.85 billion last year thanks to Biden's infrastructure plan. Last year, Spanish investment in China was 91 million.
