Foreign Companies Keep Choosing Ohio. Their First U.S. Lease Is Still the Riskiest Deal They'll Sign.

Walk the floor of the 2026 SelectUSA Investment Summit and you'll hear the same sentence in a dozen accents: the United States is still the destination. The numbers back it up. U.S. manufacturing FDI reached roughly $162 billion in 2025, part of a global manufacturing sector that pulled in more than $270 billion in announced greenfield investment last year. Nearly 40% of new billion-dollar U.S. manufacturing projects now originate with a foreign parent company. And a disproportionate share of that capital is landing in one place: foreign direct investment in the Midwest, and Ohio in particular, is no longer a trend line — it's a pattern regional economic developers now plan around.

Fuyao's billion-dollar redevelopment of a shuttered GM plant in Dayton. AMG Vanadium's $300 million facility in Muskingum County. An Italian manufacturer with four decades in Hamilton expanding alongside a new international employer, part of a 258-job win REDI Cincinnati announced this spring. These aren't isolated wins. They're evidence of what economic development officials at the NAIOP Midwest Industrial Conference described as a structural shift: foreign manufacturers increasingly need a domestic production footprint to serve U.S. customers, and Ohio's workforce, logistics position, and cost structure keep winning the site selection scorecard.

Here's what almost none of that coverage mentions: the real estate transaction that follows the ribbon-cutting announcement is where a well-capitalized foreign entrant is most exposed — and least equipped to protect itself.

Why the Midwest Keeps Winning Foreign Manufacturing Investment

The fundamentals are genuinely strong, not just marketing copy. Ohio carries the country's third-largest skilled manufacturing workforce at over 600,000 workers, sits within a one-day drive of 60% of the U.S. and Canadian population, and ranks second nationally among reshoring destinations. Federal policy has amplified the pull: since the CHIPS Act, companies have announced more than $395 billion in semiconductor and electronics investment, and the broader U.S. manufacturing investment tracker maintained by IndustrialSage now shows $1.769 trillion in announced commitments since 2025 across 37 states — with supply chain resilience and reduced foreign dependency cited as the leading drivers pulling international producers to build inside the market they sell into.

For a European auto supplier, a Japanese components manufacturer, or a Korean battery-materials producer, the calculus is straightforward: tariff exposure and customer proximity now outweigh the cost of building here. What's far less straightforward is what happens once that company sits down to actually secure a building.

The Real Estate Gap Foreign Entrants Don't Know Exists

Most foreign manufacturers entering the U.S. market for the first time make an assumption that's reasonable everywhere else in the world and expensive here: that the real estate broker showing them buildings is working for them. In most international markets, agency law either prohibits dual representation outright or makes the broker's obligations to each party explicit and separate. In the United States, it's common — even standard — for the largest brokerage firms to represent both landlords and tenants, sometimes within the same building, sometimes within the same deal. The firm's revenue depends on ongoing landlord listing relationships. A tenant's negotiating leverage depends on a broker willing to work against those same landlords. Those incentives don't coexist cleanly, and a foreign entrant with no frame of reference for how U.S. brokerage actually works has no way to know the difference until the lease is already signed.

This is where our recurring analytical signature applies directly, and it matters more for a foreign entrant than for almost any other tenant profile. A landlord's willingness to negotiate — on rent, on tenant improvement dollars, on term flexibility — isn't a function of the building's published vacancy rate. It's a function of what that landlord owes, when the loan matures, and what basis they acquired the property at. A dual-agency broker showing you three buildings has no incentive to tell you that Building B's owner is sitting on maturing floating-rate debt and needs a signature far more than the rent roll suggests. A tenant-only advisor's entire job is finding that building and using it as leverage on your behalf.

Site Selection Incentives Are a Real Estate Decision, Not a Finance Decision

The second gap compounds the first. Foreign companies frequently treat the incentive package — JobsOhio grants, county tax abatements, workforce training credits — as a separate track from the lease or purchase negotiation, often run by different internal teams or outside advisors entirely. That separation costs money. Nearly every major Midwest incentive tool is tied to fixed-asset investment or the building itself: grants for construction and machinery, property tax abatements, tax increment financing that routes improvement dollars back into the site. The incentive and the real estate deal are functionally the same negotiation, and they carry the most leverage when run in parallel, before either is finalized — not sequenced, and not split across two unconnected advisory relationships.

For a company evaluating Ohio against a second or third U.S. state simultaneously — which most serious foreign entrants do — that parallel-track approach is also the single biggest source of negotiating power. Regional economic development organizations compete hardest while the decision is genuinely open. A tenant-only advisor who understands both the real estate and incentive mechanics can keep that competitive window open far longer than a company navigating the process alone, or through a broker whose loyalties sit elsewhere.

What This Looks Like in Practice

A foreign manufacturer evaluating a Midwest facility should expect their advisor to do three things a landlord-conflicted broker structurally cannot: disclose exactly who they represent and how they're compensated before any building tour; investigate the ownership and debt position of every building under consideration, not just its asking rent; and run the incentive negotiation and the lease negotiation as one coordinated process rather than two. None of this requires slowing down an investment that's already been approved at the board level overseas. It requires making sure the U.S. team executing the site decision is structurally aligned with the company writing the check — which, for most first-time entrants, it currently isn't.

Threats & Opportunities

The opportunity: The Midwest's FDI momentum is real and durable, built on workforce depth, logistics geography, and incentive tools weighted toward exactly the kind of fixed-asset investment foreign manufacturers are making. Companies that pair strong site fundamentals with tenant-only representation and coordinated incentive negotiation are capturing meaningfully better terms than the headline numbers suggest.

The threat: Dual-agency brokerage remains the default in U.S. commercial real estate, and foreign entrants — unfamiliar with how the market actually works — are the tenant profile least likely to catch a conflict of interest before it costs them. A strong site selection decision can still be undermined by a real estate transaction structured for someone else's benefit.

If your company is evaluating a first U.S. facility anywhere in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, or Western Pennsylvania, Scott Pollock and the Mohr Partners Midwest team represent tenants exclusively — no landlord listings, no dual agency, no divided loyalty. Reach Scott directly at scott.pollock@mohrpartners.com or 440.821.8149.

For a market-by-market read on where tenant leverage currently sits, see our recent breakdowns of the Indianapolis industrial market and the Midwest office sublease opportunity.