Foreign companies have invested a staggering €3,302 billion in the 'real' Dutch economy. This puts the Netherlands among the absolute world leaders. It makes the Netherlands richer, but also more powerless; more strategically dependent, but also strategically important. But there is a catch. The new cabinet must resolve this, but it is torn between 'open' ministers and 'autonomists'.
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In this article, you will read:
- how unique the Netherlands is when it comes to foreign investment
- why that makes our country so much more prosperous
- but the Netherlands also makes it dependent on other countries
- why politics has exacerbated this problem
- why the Netherlands is particularly unsuited to the idea of strategic autonomy
- what politics could do to turn the tide
Shell? Gone. Unilever? Gone? AkzoNobel and DSM? After a merger, they have one foot abroad. How awful, right? It often seems that our business climate is in a terrible state. You hear this same list repeated ad nauseam whenever even one company mentions the possibility of leaving, and panic strikes again.
But that means we're looking in the wrong direction.
Of course, Dutch multinationals are important to our economy, but foreign multinationals are much more important. They have invested €3,302 billion in Dutch factories, data centers, offices, and other businesses, according to figures from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB). Letterbox companies are excluded from this.
This puts the Netherlands among the absolute world leaders. The OECD, which uses its own figures, counts only three countries that have attracted more foreign investment than the Netherlands. The Netherlands ranks fourth after the United States ($16,388 billion), China ($3,622 billion), and the United Kingdom ($2,504 billion). And that with a population of 18 million.
If you compare foreign investment with the size of the economy, you will see that only the tiny state of Luxembourg attracts more foreign investment than the Netherlands (214% of our economy). In America, the figure is 56%, in Germany a meager 27%, and in China 19%. This means that the Netherlands really does have a fundamentally different economy to these countries: it is much more intertwined with the rest of the world.
Abroad versus the Netherlands
According to figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), there are almost 18,000 foreign multinationals operating in our country. Together, they employ 1.3 million people. This means that, for the past few years, they have been employing more people than Dutch multinationals.
And they pay better too. Employees earn €9 more per hour at an American multinational than at a Dutch one, according to calculations by Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Not because Americans are so much more socially minded, but simply because American companies earn a lot more money. Over the years, various American tech companies have chosen to establish their European headquarters in the Netherlands, often in Amsterdam. Think of Uber, Netflix, and Tesla. The advantage: if such a company grows rapidly, the Netherlands grows along with it almost automatically.
Where do all these foreign companies come from?
For years, the Netherlands was dismissed as a tax haven that mainly attracted letterbox companies. Something dirty that we had to get rid of. Certainly during the Rutte 3 cabinet, the then State Secretary for Finance Hans Vijlbrief took an axe to the tax haven (the question is whether, as Minister of Social Affairs, he will now take the same blunt axe to the welfare state).
But all those fictitious billions flowing through the Zuidas obscured the view of the gigantic real flows of investment. More than 500 billion euros comes from America, followed by the British. Although the Netherlands is part of the EU, less than half of the money comes from our fellow EU member states. This indicates that the Netherlands is not so much a true EU economy as a link between the Anglo-Saxon world and continental Europe.
What are all those foreign companies doing here?
Foreign multinationals operating here are as diverse as the Dutch economy itself. And the definition of foreign direct investment (FDI) is also broad. So broad that you might wonder how 'real' some of them are, even though letterbox companies have been filtered out. This is particularly true in the financial sector. But the investments that do land in the Netherlands are enormous.
There are American companies, such as Dow Chemical, which have been building their largest chemical park outside America from scratch here since the 1960s. When a foreign company takes over a Dutch company, this also counts as a foreign investment. Think of the American company PACCAR, which revived the bankrupt truck manufacturer DAF in the 1990s with money and knowledge transfer. Or Tata Steel, which bought the former Hoogovens. Eli Lilly is going to build a drug factory in the Netherlands for 2.6 billion, while other pharmaceutical giants mainly conduct research here.
When you rank Dutch industry according to CO2 emissions (the more emissions, the larger you are, after all), you see that the ten largest factories are all foreign-owned.
This is also reflected in our export figures. According to figures from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), around two-thirds of Dutch exports come from foreign multinationals.
In addition to this industrial activity, which accounts for more than 200,000 jobs, there is also a lot of office work to be done, such as at the aforementioned regional headquarters of Tesla or Nike in Hilversum. More than 100,000 people also work in ICT, for example at IBM, Google, or Booking.com.
And then it stopped
In the ten years following the financial crisis, foreign investment in our economy roughly doubled. However, since 2019, momentum has slowed and investment has remained virtually unchanged, according to figures from DNB.
This is partly due to the measures taken by the Rutte 3 and 4 cabinets, which significantly tightened the tax rules for multinationals. They wanted to target letterbox companies, but in doing so, they also affected real companies. For example, by introducing stricter rules on deducting interest from tax. In general, companies became the government's cash cow. Between 2018 and 2025, their taxes were increased by €13.5 billion. This sent a clear signal to boardrooms in America and India. The recent controversy over the change to Box 3—whether justified or not—which even crossed national borders, did not help to improve the Netherlands' reputation.
In addition, the Netherlands became bogged down in the nitrogen crisis. A company such as Dow Chemical wanted to invest more than €1 billion in sustainability (and nitrogen reduction), but was not allowed to do so because of nitrogen regulations.
Read also: Is it possible? Will the Jetten cabinet solve the nitrogen problem?
But not everything can be blamed on Dutch politicians. International agreements against tax avoidance and changes to US tax law made it much less attractive for companies to move money internationally. In addition, numerous subsidies were introduced in the US (under Biden) and rules were scrapped (under Trump), making American companies more likely to invest in their own country than here.
In addition, the US, China, and Europe all want to become less dependent on others and are trying to produce more themselves, whether it be energy or chips. This trend toward strategic autonomy is hitting the Netherlands particularly hard, as a country that is packed with foreign companies.
So what now?
Whatever the exact cause may be, the Netherlands now has a problem. Foreign companies that create so many well-paid jobs and produce and export so many goods and services here are no longer investing further in the country.
It seems unlikely that the Netherlands will be able to attract many large industrial investments in the near future. The nitrogen problems are too significant, and other countries are too appealing.
Perhaps this is different for large energy transition projects, where 'Brussels' is willing to turn a blind eye to nitrogen emissions. The question is whether the new cabinet will be able to convince companies such as Tata Steel and Dow to invest billions in making their factories more sustainable in the coming years, or whether they will allow them to fall into disrepair. Investments to maintain existing factories, in other words, not to fill the Netherlands with new factories.
Although the demand for (AI) data centers is increasing, this does not seem to be taking off either, due to restrictive Dutch regulations.
The market finds its way
The silver lining is that the market adapts itself. If the Netherlands is an expensive country with limited space, companies will naturally opt for activities that are suited to this situation. Research and development (R&D), for example. The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) – the Economic Affairs club that tries to attract foreign companies – noted that last year, for the first time, R&D was the largest category of new investments, ahead of factories and (regional) headquarters.
The bad news is that there will be cuts to the NFIA. While foreign investment is drying up and the Netherlands is in a bad way, the country is not stepping up its efforts, but is instead dismantling its information desk.
What will the new cabinet do?
The coalition agreement contains many plans, such as reducing electricity bills for industry, which could potentially attract investment. Two weeks ago, at Techleap's annual startup jamboree, Rob Jetten announced his strong commitment to talent and to promoting the message that the Netherlands is once again open to international students, employees, and companies.
Read the report of the Techleap meeting here: Complaining startups are actually doing quite well
The new State Secretary for Climate, Jo-Annes de Bat, has been tasked with making industry more sustainable. As a CDA representative in Zeeland, he has already worked hard for companies such as Dow and Yara, so who knows, he may be able to get investments off the ground at the national level as well.
But in contrast to this optimistic, open stance, there are also various government officials who favor a more closed approach, particularly toward Chinese and American companies. A few weeks ago, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tom Berendsen (CDA), told Hollands Welvaren the possible takeover of two Rotterdam container terminals by a Chinese state-owned company. "I find it truly unacceptable that Chinese influence is so great."
Read here: Trump and Xi are playing Risk with the Port of Rotterdam—and we don't want to play along.
Berendsen's fellow minister at Foreign Affairs, Trade Minister Sjoerd Sjoerdsma (D66), does not have a good relationship with China either. Not to mention Vincent Karremans, who temporarily took the reins at Nexperia, which was bought by the Chinese company Wingtech. Although he is no longer Minister of Economic Affairs, the message that has been conveyed to China is: think twice before investing in the Netherlands.
In addition, there is now a new State Secretariat for Digital Economy and Sovereignty, to which Willemijn Aerdts of the D66 party has been appointed. She is tasked with reducing the influence of (American) tech giants and leaning more on European parties. Distrust of America, the largest investor in the Netherlands, has grown significantly in The Hague.
The Hague is far away
Foreign multinationals have made the Netherlands much richer. But the consequence is also that the future of the Dutch economy, much more than in other countries, is decided in foreign boardrooms. People who are not part of our 'polder', who do not form an Old Boys Network, or who have no emotional ties to the Netherlands. They can invest anywhere in the world. To attract new investments, the Netherlands will therefore have to come up with good arguments. The best in the world.
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Joris Heijn
Joris Heijn