The Bogus Charge of ‘Shipping Jobs Overseas’

In the final push before Election Day, President Obama has been traveling the country criticizing Republicans for favoring tax breaks for U.S. companies that supposedly ship U.S. jobs overseas. It’s a bogus charge that I dismantle in an op-ed in this morning’s New York Post:

The charge sounds logical: Under the US corporate tax code, US-based companies aren't taxed on profits that their affiliates abroad earn until those profits are returned here. Supposedly, this "tax break" gives firms an incentive to create jobs overseas rather than at home, so any candidate who doesn't want to impose higher taxes on those foreign operations is guilty of "shipping jobs overseas."

In fact, American companies have quite valid reasons beyond any tax advantage to establish overseas affiliates: That's how they reach foreign customers with US-branded goods and services.

Those affiliates allow US companies to sell services that can only be delivered where the customer lives (such as fast food and retail) or to customize their products, such as automobiles, to better reflect the taste of customers in foreign markets.

I go on to point out that close to 90 percent of what U.S.-owned affiliates produce abroad is sold abroad; that those foreign affiliates are now the primary way U.S. companies reach global consumers with U.S.-branded goods and services; and that the more jobs they create in their affiliates abroad, the more they create in their parent operations in the United States. If Congress raises taxes on those foreign operations, it will only force U.S. companies to cede market share to their German and Japanese (and French and Korean) competitors.

I unpack the issue at greater length in a Free Trade Bulletin published last year, and on pages 99-104 of my recent Cato book, Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.