Not automatically. Meeting sellers, viewing premises, and negotiating terms are ordinary steps in acquiring a business. Concern arises when activity resembled performing work in the United States, or when the stated purpose of admission did not match what happened. The facts decide it, so obtain an individualized review before filing.
Write the account before anyone characterizes it
Produce a chronology first: entry and exit dates, meeting participants, what was inspected, what was signed, and whether money moved. Note anything you performed yourself, such as staffing, serving customers, or managing the seller's operations. Then let counsel apply the law to those facts.
The E-2 criteria — nationality, ownership, at-risk capital, a real enterprise, non-marginality — still have to be met independently. Take the questions in the order in which a bad answer would close the file. Treaty nationality comes first: it is held by the individual investor, or by owners of at least fifty percent of the enterprise, and no amount of capital substitutes for it.
Whether the enterprise is real and operating, rather than idle funds or undeveloped land, comes next, since buying assets alone does not answer it. The prior trip is the last question rather than the first, and it is a question about explanation rather than about eligibility. Hypothetical example: a buyer of a clinical-supplies wholesaler spends a month reconstructing meeting notes while the ownership percentage that would establish treaty nationality has never been checked.
Settle the structural questions first, because no account of anything can cure them.