The net effect of foreign investment by multinational corporations depends on a series of variables, such as whether new imports and exports are generated. Efficiency-seeking foreign investment, for example, will nearly always have a larger impact on the U.S. current account than market-seeking FDI because imports from foreign affiliates are recorded at their full sale price, while income flows generated from sales abroad only take the profit margin into account. This fact explains why the recent shift to efficiency-seeking investments in emerging markets has had a disproportionately large impact on the foreign affiliate trade balance.