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An important feature of the 1980s has been the substantial fall in the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the developing countries and also, with the limited exception of the Asian NIE (Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore) and China, to the newly industrialized countries, in particular those in Latin America. FDI has been concentrated more than ever among the advanced industrialized countries of OECD. The same period has witnessed a number of extremely important changes, both in the nature and location of basic or key technologies, the role of technology in industrial competitiveness; the most appropriate industrial management paradigm following the difficulties of the "Fordist" one; the nature of predominant international supply or market structures; and the relationships between productive and financial capital. Today a number of governments in developing countries and in NIC, among them the new government of Brazil, are again engaged in an attempt to attract FDI and to make foreign capital one of the major pillars of industrial revival and future growth. This paper argues that this policy objective is both fairly illusory and largely mistaken. It is fairly illusory in that it seriously underestimates the nature and strength of the structural factors which have been at work since the mid-1970s and seriously modified the strategies and investment priorities of the TNC which under took the brunt of the investment in developing countries and NICs in the earlier "golden age" of the 1960s and 1970s . The objective of luring foreign capital again to Brazil in ways and on a level similar to the 1960s is also largely mistaken in that it fails to recognize that the change in technological paradigms has modified the parameters of international technology transfers (cf. Ernst and O'Connor, 1989) and made indigenous and endogenous industrial growth dependent to a much higher degree than in the previous period (19601975) on factors which foreign capital cannot and will not bring to or build in host countries and which must be created and built indigenously.

In the last three decades, the peripheral countries have played an increasing role on the international scene, mainly with regard to Foreign Direct Investment Flows. This article aims to analyze the productive internationalization strategies adopted by Mexichem and Tigre business groups, largest manufacturers of plastic pipes and fittings in Mexico and Brazil. Throughout the text are highlighted the different trajectories, the main branches, the overseas operations and international integration forms of the business groups. Two important conclusions are indicated. First, the main factors that led to the productive internationalization of both groups were the growing need for new dynamic spaces of capital accumulation, due to the economic slowdown and the market concentration, and participation in the struggle for oligopolistic concentration of the plastic pipes and fittings industry on a global scale. Second, multi-territorial strategies of productive internationalization (sectoral and market entry) reflect the consolidation trajectories of these business groups in their respective markets. Our original idea is that the distinctive capabilities built by the groups during the consolidation process in the domestic market have been used to change the patterns of international competition in the pipes and fittings industry at various scales.