The present paper undertakes an examination of multinational investments from the point of view of the host country. The contributions of foreign investments are often overestimated. Due to the resource commitments to the parent company,.foreign affiliates may have a bias favoring purchase of inputs from the parent country; and the bulk of production is exported either back to the parent country or to third countries. Because of this tendency, increasing investment by multinational firms eventually may lead the host country to become a footloose base economy. This would heighten the vulnerability of the host country’s economy to the economic and political vagaries of international commodity markets. To examine the above statements, some instances of Japanese investment in Taiwan are considered. The study suggests, for three major Japanese investment industries--electronic and electrical appliances, chemicals, and textiles--as long as Japanese can supply the inputs, Japanese firms tend to import more from Japan than local firms, and export about the same amounts back to Japan.