TOKYO -- Corporate foreign direct investment, the driver of globalization, is slowing, reflecting weakened business sentiment amid a global trend toward protectionism.
The number of new greenfield investment projects -- the factories, research centers and offices that a company builds when it enters a foreign country -- in the first half of 2019 dropped to the same level as in the second half of 2009, when the world economy was still smarting from the U.S. financial crisis.
