The stakes

Tariffs are back. The pitch from Washington is blunt: build it in America, or pay to ship it in. The policy goal is to bring more factories onto U.S. soil. The smartest place to start is not with foreign manufacturers that have never set foot in America. It is with the ones that already have.

A foreign-headquartered manufacturer that already runs one U.S. facility has crossed the hardest line. They know how to navigate U.S. permitting, hiring, and supply chains. Convincing them to add a second site, or to shift more production from home, is a different conversation from cold-pitching a firm that has never operated here.

The mandate

The U.S. Department of Commerce needed the list of those firms. Not "manufacturers somewhere abroad." Specifically: companies headquartered outside the United States, classified as manufacturers, with at least one existing U.S. site. That intersection does not sit in any registry on its own.

What we built

We built it by joining two sides. On one side, manufacturers across 200 countries drawn from each country's official registry, with ownership and corporate structure resolved up to the ultimate parent. On the other side, every U.S. business location that traces back to a foreign parent. We matched the two and kept only the rows where the parent is abroad and a U.S. site already exists.

The output is a working list of foreign manufacturers with U.S. presence, enriched with the fields trade officers actually need. Headquarters country. Sector and sub-sector. U.S. footprint by state and facility count. Ownership chain to the ultimate parent. Workforce band where the registry supports it.

A trade officer can filter for, say, every Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer with one or two U.S. sites but no second-tier expansion yet, and have the shortlist in seconds.

What changed

The Department now runs foreign direct investment outreach against a real shortlist of warm prospects instead of cold-pitching the entire world. Conversations start with companies that already understand U.S. operations, which means they close faster. The list is also the baseline they measure new factory announcements against, year over year.

Why it matters

You cannot bring a factory you cannot find. We made the world's factories with a foot in America findable.

Finding foreign manufacturers already on U.S. soil

Tracking global trade flows