Foreign Buying of US Stocks Jumps 134% in 2025 Despite Tariffs

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(Bloomberg) — Foreign investors bought more than twice the amount of US stocks in 2025 as they did a year before, even as President Donald Trump’s tariffs rattled markets and clouded corporate outlooks. 

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Non-US purchases climbed to $720.1 billion on a net basis last year, up 134% from $307.5 billion in 2024, according to US Treasury Department data released on Wednesday.

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The sharp surge in buying is a challenge to the “Sell America” sentiment that gained traction last year as US tariffs threatened to upend global trade and investors worried about White House threats to Federal Reserve independence. 

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“Sell America is an overstated story, at least for equities,” said Owen Lamont, senior vice-president and portfolio manager at Acadian Asset Management LLC.

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“What we see is American exceptionalism,” he added. “That process of the extreme love for American tech stocks seem to be continuing.”

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While investors’ policy-related worries stirred up volatility on US stock indexes last year, some of their concerns were offset by the emergence of artificial intelligence, which, until very recently, was largely seen as a force that would boost corporate profits.

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Still, American stock gains fell short of global peers last year: the benchmark S&P 500 Index posted a 16% annual return, trailing that of the MSCI World Excluding United States Index by 13 percentage points.

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Excluding the Cayman Islands and Ireland — where many global investment funds are registered —  Norway was the biggest buyer of US stocks in 2025, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of the data, which goes back to 2023. 

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The Nordic country net purchased $81.8 billion, almost three times its 2024 total. Singapore, the top buyer in 2024, was a close second, purchasing $79 billion. South Korea was also a major buyer, adding $73.6 billion, nearly five times more than it did in 2024.

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Mainland China was a net seller for the third year in a row, shedding $34.1 billion worth of US stocks in 2025. Only Kuwait sold more, offloading $36.5 billion.

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Canada, which was the biggest seller of US stocks in 2024, became a buyer last year, net purchasing $10.6 billion. That turnaround came despite Canadians expressing fury about trade policies that weighed on their economy and Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty. 

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