The tariffs were meant to protect American industry. They also, as a side effect, marked down its price. Asian companies with capital noticed. "Asia buying America" isn't quite the right frame though. CFIUS has been quietly choosing who gets to shop.
The tariffs were meant to protect American industry. They also, as a side effect, marked down its price. Asian companies with capital noticed. "Asia buying America" isn't quite the right frame though. CFIUS has been quietly choosing who gets to shop.
In January 2025, the dollar index sat at 110. By December it had closed at 97. A 9.4% annual decline, the steepest in a decade.
That number did something no tariff negotiation could: it automatically reduced the price of every dollar-denominated US asset by roughly 10% for anyone buying in yen, rupees, or Singapore dollars. A $10 billion acquisition costs a Japanese buyer around $900 million less than it would have in January 2025. Not because the target got cheaper. Because the dollar did.
The tariffs were supposed to force Asian manufacturers to build inside America or pay to access it. What the administration didn't model: the same policy uncertainty that rattled global confidence in US economic management also weakened the dollar. The tool meant to protect American factories discounted American companies in the same stroke.
Morgan Stanley estimates the dollar could lose another 10% by end-2026. The sale isn't over.
Asia-Pacific M&A hit $946 billion in 2025, up 37% from 2024. China is the biggest number; Japan is the fastest mover.
China's $399 billion is mostly domestic: state-encouraged consolidation, regulatory-driven mergers, SOE restructuring. Japanese outbound dealmaking tells a different story. Japanese acquirers announced 306 overseas deals worth $113 billion by September 2025, twice the value of the same period a year earlier. India ran $113 billion in total M&A in 2025, up 42% year-on-year.
The number that matters most here isn't the APAC total. It's the destination.
The cluster of major acquisitions from late 2024 through early 2026 isn't a coincidence. The dollar is weak. The regulatory path for Allied-country buyers is shortening. US targets in strategic sectors are willing.
SoftBank committed $30 billion to OpenAI's Stargate AI infrastructure project in February 2026, the largest single corporate commitment to an AI project in history. The same firm acquired Ampere Computing, a US-based ARM chip architecture company, from Carlyle and Oracle for $6.5 billion. Mitsubishi Corporation signed a $7.5 billion deal for Aethon Energy's US natural gas portfolio, the largest Japanese acquisition of a US energy asset on record. Sun Pharma, India's largest pharmaceutical company, paid $11.75 billion for Organon in April 2026, buying FDA approval pipelines, women's health franchises, and US distribution infrastructure that no Indian firm had previously held at this scale.
These aren't trophies. They're capability purchases. The buyers want regulatory pipelines, infrastructure positions, and American distribution moats that would take two decades to build from scratch.
Here is what most coverage of this trend doesn't say: China cannot do most of this.
CFIUS (the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) reviews acquisitions of American companies for national security risk. Since 2017, it has made Chinese acquisitions of US technology, energy, and data companies near-impossible to complete. The pattern is in the annual filing data.
Chinese CFIUS notice filings fell 28% between 2022 and 2024, from roughly 36 to 26, and declarations from Chinese investors stayed extremely low at just two in both 2023 and 2024. Japan's total CFIUS filings moved in the opposite direction: from 26 in 2023 to 40 in 2024, a 54% increase. In the critical technology category (semiconductors, AI, biotech), Japan led all acquirer countries with 24 reviewed transactions in 2024. China was third with 16.
This is the structural split. It isn't "Asia" buying America. It's Japan and, increasingly, India, countries with Allied-country status and CFIUS-compatible deal profiles, who are buying America. China is routing capital to Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and domestic consolidation instead. US targets in advanced technology sectors are effectively off the table for Chinese buyers, not because the deals aren't attractive but because they won't clear the committee.
Strip out the aggregate numbers. Look at what's actually changing hands.
SoftBank's OpenAI Stargate commitment and Ampere Computing acquisition put a Japanese conglomerate inside the US AI buildout, not as a passive investor but as a structural backer of both the model stack and the chip architecture running underneath it. AI infrastructure, in other words, with a Japanese owner.
Mitsubishi's Aethon deal gives it control over US natural gas reserves at a moment when American LNG is the primary export replacing Russian supply across Asia. The acquirer and the end market occupy the same geography. That's not a coincidence either.
Sun Pharma's Organon purchase is a statement about where India Inc. thinks it's going. India's drug industry spent two decades supplying generic APIs upward into American pharma companies. Sun Pharma just bought the distribution infrastructure, branded pipeline, and US commercial presence that sat above them. The relationship used to flow one way. It just flipped.
And Ampere Computing builds ARM-based server chips competing with x86 Intel silicon. A Japanese owner of an alternative chip architecture, in 2026, is not a portfolio allocation. It's a position in an architectural war that hasn't been decided yet.
[missing markdown anchor: The 1989 echo — and what's different]
The Asia Times piece is right that the direction of capital has reversed. It misses the architecture behind the reversal.
This isn't "Asia buying America." It's a specific US regulatory architecture at work: CFIUS reviews, executive orders, tariff-driven dollar weakness, Allied-country fast-tracks, all of it creating a specific window for specific buyers. Japan and India can shop. China cannot. The sectors clustering in this wave (AI, energy, pharmaceuticals) aren't random. They're sectors where Allied acquirers can get deals cleared and where US sellers see strategic-grade buyers.
This is a managed reversal, not a spontaneous one. The management is American. The beneficiaries, for now, are Japanese and Indian.
APAC M&A aggregate data from A&O Shearman Global M&A Insights (December 2025) and PwC Global M&A Trends 2026 Outlook. Japan outbound deal figures from White & Case M&A Explorer (September 2025). India M&A total from A&O Shearman; individual deal values from Reuters and company press releases (SoftBank February 2026, Mitsubishi Corporation January 2026, Sun Pharma April 2026).
CFIUS filing data from the CFIUS Annual Report to Congress for CY 2024 (August 2025), cross-referenced via Wiley Law, DLA Piper, Hogan Lovells, and Troutman Pepper Locke client alerts. China 2022 filing estimate calculated from the reported 27.78% cumulative decline to 26 in 2024. Japan 2022 figure is estimated from the 2023-2024 trajectory.
Dollar index (DXY) data: US Bank Asset Management Group (April 2026), Morgan Stanley Research midyear outlook (August 2025), Morningstar Investment Management (December 2025). DXY 2025 annual close: 97.96 per Financer.
China outbound M&A context: EY China COIN Overview of Outbound Investment 2024 (February 2025).
This is an editorial analysis of published datasets. Figures are reproduced as cited; the argument about CFIUS as the structural selector is the author's.