U.S. Investment in Latin America's Energy Sector Doubles to $12.6 Billion Annually

Global infrastructure capital is moving through a moment without precedent in the past century, according to a Latitude Media analysis drawing on perspectives from Nuveen, an asset manager with $1.4 trillion under management. That realignment is already landing in Latin America.

According to an Atlantic Council report published on July 22, U.S. greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America and the Caribbean averaged $32.9 billion annually between 2020 and 2025, above the historical average of $28.7 billion over the past two decades. Energy is the sector that saw the sharpest transformation: flows rose from roughly $6 billion annually to $12.6 billion over the same period, peaking at $18.9 billion in 2024. Mexico and Brazil account for 63% of all U.S. greenfield FDI in the region since 2003, driven by market size, geographic proximity, and the USMCA.

The report documents that U.S. FDI generated 65% more jobs per billion dollars invested than Chinese investment, and 22% more than European investment. No other foreign investor allocates a greater share of capital to research and development in the region. On the digital front, U.S. investment averaged $8.5 billion annually between 2020 and 2024, with data center announcements from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. China, however, is advancing: its greenfield FDI has tripled since 2020 and in automotive manufacturing it reached effective parity with the United States for the first time. In 2025, ByteDance announced $40 billion for a data center in Brazil, a figure that on its own surpasses the U.S. annual average in the digital sector.

The pace at which economic imperatives (energy for data centers, transmission networks, and manufacturing) outpace political friction will define the trajectory, according to the Latitude Media analysis. In Latin America, 2025 FDI, which fell to $19.3 billion due to tariff uncertainty, will be the immediate barometer of that dynamic.

This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor prior to publication.