Analysis 2025: The Rest of the Global Best to Invest

Site Selection’s Global Best to Invest rankings of country- and metro-level economic development performance and promise are based on an index of data from the following sources:

Space does not always allow us to feature detailed insights from these various sources in our print publication. But online space does. Below are findings, observations and direct comments from the rankings sources and from others that corroborate, complement or sometimes run counter to our findings.

Kearney

Released in April each year (past Site Selection’s print deadline), the Foreign Direct Investment Confidence Index from Kearney offers signs of concern given the geopolitical environment and tariff proliferation. “Nevertheless, respondents still clearly value foreign direct investment, with 84% indicating plans to increase their FDI in the next three years,” Kearney announced. Though this represents a four-point decrease from last year, “it remains a high figure and a sign that business leaders are still open to and in favor of international trade and investment.”

CREDIT: Graphs courtesy of Kearney

The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom top the rankings for FDI confidence, followed by Japan and Germany. Not so different from Site Selection’s Global Best to Invest findings. Investors like the technological innovation environment of the States the most, while major infrastructure improvements get their attention in Canada. The UK stands out, said Kearney, because of its strong consumer market, robust financial services sector, infrastructure quality and high capacity for innovation.

Kearney found that investor optimism fell by four percentage points to 26% this year, but the net optimism score for the United States was up by seven points to 43%. Others on the rise are Japan (up by 7% to 40%) and the UAE (up by 4% to 42%). Among emerging markets, surveyed investors still see China as No. 1, followed by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India and Mexico, all of which made the top 25 markets overall.

UN Trade and Development

Formerly known as UNCTAD, UN Trade and Development in March reported that world trade saw record expansion to $33 trillion in 2024, up by 3.7% over 2023. Among trends identified in the organization’s Global Trade Update:

• Services led the expansion, growing 9% annually and adding $700 billion (nearly 60% of the total growth). Trade in goods grew 2%, contributing $500 billion.
• “Nearshoring and friendshoring trends reversed in 2024, as businesses moved beyond limiting trade to geopolitical allies or nearby regions. Instead of consolidating supply chains, firms are now diversifying trade networks across multiple regions to reduce risk — creating opportunities but adding complexity.”
• “Trade dependence is also shifting. Economies such as Russia, Viet Nam, and India, have deepened trade ties with specific partners, while others, including Australia and the EU, are reducing reliance on traditional markets. The decline in trade concentration suggests that smaller economies are playing a bigger role.”
• Merchandise trade imbalances widened. The US trade deficit with China reached -$355 billion, widening by $14 billion in the fourth quarter, while its deficit with the EU increased by $12 billion to -$241 billion. Meanwhile, China’s trade surplus reached its highest level since 2022, and the EU reversed previous deficits, posting a trade surplus for the year, helped by high energy prices.
• “Today, about two-thirds of international trade occurs without tariffs, either because countries have chosen to reduce duties under most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment or through other trade agreements.”

Periodic Table Shows Countries With Best Chemistry

Parag Khanna, founder and CEO of AI-powered geospatial analytics platform AlphaGeo and author of the 2021 book “MOVE: Where People Are Going for a Better Future,” has unveiled the Periodic Table of the States (PTOS), based on a “meta-index” of “metrics that really matter” that measure strength and “stateness” to arrive at an overall score for stability. Switzerland and Germany top the list, followed by Japan, Korea, Sweden, Canada, the United States and France.

PTOS captures “not just legacy achievements but momentum in areas like technological innovation, food security, infrastructure quality and climate resilience,” said an AlphaGeo release from its home base in Singapore, “factors that indicate which states really have master plans for their future.”

DHL and NYU Stern School of Business

At an event in Mexico City in March, John Pearson, CEO of DHL Express, and Prof. Steven A. Altman of the NYU Stern School of Business (lead author of the DHL Trade Atlas), shared in-depth analysis of global trade and regional connectedness. The organizations’ Global Connectedness Report is part of Site Selection’s Global Best to Invest index. Among the findings in the Atlas:

• The report’s five-year baseline forecast calls for modestly faster global goods trade volume growth over the next five years than during the previous decade. Trade growth is forecast to match or slightly outpace GDP growth, with 16% more trade in 2029 than  in 2024.
• “President Trump’s proposed tariff increases are not likely to reverse the growth of global trade,” the report boldly predicted. “Even if all proposed U.S. tariff increases enter into force and other countries retaliate in turn, global trade is still expected to grow over the next five years — albeit at a much slower pace.”
• “Over the past five years, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Ireland stood out as the only countries ranking among the top 30 for both speed and scale. Over the next five years, four countries are forecast to rank among the top 30 on both dimensions: India, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.”
• “South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia are forecast to achieve the fastest trade volume growth between 2024 and 2029 (with compound annual growth rates between 5% and 6%).”
• “Over the next five years, China and the U.S. are still predicted to generate the most absolute trade growth, but China’s share of global trade growth is fore-cast to decline from 18% (2019–2024) to 12% (2024–2029), while the U.S. share dips from 14% to 10%. India is forecast to achieve the third largest amount of absolute trade growth (6% of the global total) over the next five years. Whereas China and the U.S. alone accounted for 32% of global trade growth from 2019 to 2024, they are forecast to generate only 22% of the world’s trade growth from 2024 to 2029.”

Asserting that the data say the levels of global trade and globalization have increased, Pearson said, “The U.S. may have retreated from global trade for a period of time, but the rest of the world is embracing it.” Examples he cited in terms of trade lane growth in emerging countries were $151 billion from Mexico into the United States and $110 billion from Vietnam into the United States. As for FDI in broader terms, “India is the highest recipient of inward FDI of any country other than the USA, he said, and “Saudi Arabia is growing very fast right now.” There is a little less enthusiasm for nearshoring and reshoring, he said, “but Mexico is the shining example.”

Mexico, he said, “is a poster child for global trade, with trade representing 80% of GDP today vs. 15% 50 years ago. “I worry not a bit about these tariff situations, because Mexico can easily benefit significantly if other countries end up with tariffs and Mexico doesn’t.” How important is Chinese corporate investment? “We will place Chinese salespeople in 30 to 40 countries [in order] to be first in, best dressed for companies landing in Thailand, Indonesia and here in Mexico,” Pearson said.

But aren’t we seeing a regionalization of investment as protectionist tendencies kick in? To the contrary, Altman said. “The data show the opposite story,” he said, citing a metric familiar to DHL: average distance traveled by cargo, which increased rather than decreased over the past five years. “The share happening inside roughly continent-sized regions is at a new low of 51%,” Altman said.

India also continues to build momentum. “Having been going to India regularly for the last decade or two, I see nothing but economic progress there,” Pearson said, noting logistics infrastructure improvements, airport modernization and the growth of manufacturing and distribution clusters.

As for supply chain actions in times of crisis — whether caused by policy, pandemic or natural catastrophe — Pearson put things in context, observing that when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in 2010 and an ash cloud over Europe limited aircraft to only two planes for an entire week, “companies said they were going to change everything. But it’s actually very difficult to change your setup.”

Some may have moved tooling closer to home in case a machine went down, but by and large, he said, “Companies that said they were going to change everything did very little indeed.” They are well served by the east-west trade route. “Those chains are built on efficiency and economics,” said Pearson. “Much of what the global supply chain was remained.”

It remains to be seen how the links in that chain bear up under the strain of an apparent trade war. But as Pearson expressed it from the dais in Mexico City, sometimes simple truths prevail.

“Do not underestimate,” he said, “the creativity of buyers and sellers wanting to do business with other people.”