More overseas companies investigated by U.S. authorities for national security concerns have abandoned investments in the United States since President Donald Trump took office, a report showed on Friday.

The report, released by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), shows that foreign companies abandoned roughly 14 percent of U.S. investments that were investigated by CFIUS in 2017 “in light of CFIUS-related national security concerns.”

The percentage in 2018 was 11 percent.

Those figures were sharply up from the period immediately before Trump took office. About 4 or 5 percent of such transactions probed by the committee were dropped annually from 2014 to 2016, the report showed.

The Committee, led by the Treasury Department, reviews foreign investment in the United States for national security issues.

The document offers few details about the deals. The Trump administration has beefed up oversight of foreign investment in key sectors, from critical technology to sensitive personal data and real estate, with new powers from Congress.

A law approved last year, known as FIRRMA, expanded the powers of CFIUS to probe transactions previously excluded from its purview, including attempts by foreigners to purchase non-controlling stakes in U.S. companies. It also instituted mandatory filing requirements for certain transactions.

A focus of the law was keeping China from acquiring sensitive U.S. technologies, which prompted Congress to mandate stricter oversight of U.S. controls on exports as well.

Before those laws were passed, China accounted for the most investments in American critical technology in the 2016-2017 period, blowing past Canada, the United Kingdom and France to account for more than a fifth of the total for that period, the report shows. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese transactions rose from just 29 in 2015 to 60 in 2017.

The data also showed the proportion of deals that CFIUS decided to investigate doubled from 2014 to 2018. (Reuters)

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