Caterpillar

=Caterpillar, for example, saved $2.4 billion between 2000 and 2012 by funneling its global parts business through a Swiss subsidiary (a ruse so audacious that one of its tax consultants <a href="denied:%20%20%20http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/business/at-hearing-caterpillar-defends-tax-practices.html?r=0" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; text-align: justify; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">warned</a> Caterpillar executives to “get ready to do some dancing” when called before Congress to justify it).  <div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/top-us-companies-lay-off-thousands-of-workers-while-rewarding-shareholders/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/top-us-companies-lay-off-thousands-of-workers-while-rewarding-shareholders/</a></div><div>
</div><div>Some of the largest companies in the U.S. have <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/12/23/shareholder-capitalism-and-the-slow-death-of-u-s-manufacturing_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">rewarded their shareholders</a> amid the coronavirus pandemic after firing thousands of employees.Companies like heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar, denim-maker Levi Strauss, toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker, furniture manufacturer Steelcase and World Wrestling Entertainment have doled out more than $700 million to shareholders in cash dividends while slashing jobs and shuttering facilities, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/05/dividends-layoffs-coronavirus/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Washington Post</a> reported. Many other companies have likewise rewarded shareholders while laying off workers.Caterpillar, for example, announced a $500 million distribution to shareholders in early April, according to the report, about two weeks after it <a href="https://www.caterpillar.com/en/news/corporate-press-releases/h/caterpillar-announces-updates-and-response-to-covid-19.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">announced</a> that it was “temporarily suspending operations at certain facilities.” The company did not say how many workers would be impacted.“We are taking a variety of actions globally, but we aren’t going to discuss the number of impacted people,” a spokesperson told the outlet. “We are taking a variety of actions at our global facilities to reduce production due to weaker customer demand, potential supply constraints and the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and related government actions. These actions include temporary facility shutdowns, indefinite or temporary layoffs."Levi Strauss announced that it would distribute $32 million to shareholders on April 7, the same day that the company <a href="https://wwd.com/business-news/financial/levi-strauss-earnings-chip-bergh-coronavirus-1203556091/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said it would furlough retail workers</a>. About 4,000 workers have been affected, according to The Post.“As this human and economic tragedy unfolds globally over the coming months, we are taking swift and decisive action that will ensure we remain a winner in our industry,” Levi CEO Chip Bergh said at the time, after <a href="https://sourcingjournal.com/denim/denim-brands/levi-strauss-coronavirus-china-stores-q1-gross-margins-204429/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reporting big earnings in Q1</a>.Stanley Black & Decker <a href="https://www.hartfordbusiness.com/article/stanley-black-decker-prepares-layoffs-spending-cuts-halts-ma-activity" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">announced in early April</a> that it would furlough and lay off “non-essential” workers. It distributed $106 million in dividends to shareholders just two weeks later, The Post reported.“Throughout our company’s 177-year history, Stanley Black & Decker has weathered a series of exogenous shocks and thrived,” CEO James Loree <a href="https://ir.stanleyblackanddecker.com/news-releases/news-release-details/stanley-black-decker-provides-update-current-business-operations" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">said in the statement last month</a>. “We are in a strong position as we face today’s challenges and are taking the necessary actions now to protect our employees and the business while positioning the company to thrive into the future.”Steelcase <a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2020/03/steelcase-lays-off-nearly-all-production-employees-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">announced in March</a> that it would cut operations in four states, issuing a statement saying it took “these actions in an effort to avoid permanent headcount reductions so the company and its employees can come through this crisis together.”It announced the same day that it would issue a dividend of roughly <a href="https://ir.steelcase.com/news-releases/news-release-details/steelcase-reports-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2020-results-and" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">$8 million to shareholders</a>. Earlier that month, the company bought back $38 million in stock from shareholders.The WWE, a company whose longtime <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/29/linda-mcmahon-to-resign-as-head-of-small-business-administration-1243495" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">former CEO Linda McMahon</a> served in Trump’s Cabinet and now works on his re-election campaign, cut 10% of its workers and fired about 20 wrestlers a day before it announced $9 million in dividends for shareholders.These five companies are far from the only corporations rewarding shareholders while cutting workers, but many other companies took steps to end dividends and buybacks in response to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus.The Gap, American Eagle and Darden Restaurants — which owns Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse — announced that they would pause dividends and stop buybacks, according to The Post. Williams Sonoma said it would continue to pay full-time employees after shuttering its stores.Chris Lu, who served as the Deputy Secretary of Labor under President Obama, called out the Trump administration for <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/04/23/trump-aims-to-shield-corporations-from-legal-liability-for-workers-who-contract-covid-19-on-the-job_partner/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">pushing to protect companies</a> from being sued by workers who contract COVID-19 while ignoring businesses that reward shareholders at the expense of workers.“In Trump’s economy, these companies won’t get punished,” <a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisLu44/status/1257708719552565250" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">he said</a>. “Instead, he wants to give them liability protection.”“In a downturn like this the first thing a company should do is give up any distributions to shareholders,” William Lazonick, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told The Post. “But in a crisis, companies will differ. Some will care . . . and some will rob the workers, who should expect that their continued employment will be the company’s first concern.”</div><div>=</div>robt r<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: bold; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 26px; display: inline-block;">The Increasing Irrelevance of Corporate Nationality</h2><a href="http://robertreich.org/post/93122315065" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; line-height: 21px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </a><a href="http://robertreich.org/post/93122315065" class="timestamp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 21px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">MONDAY, JULY 28, 2014</a><div class="caption" style="margin: 21px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-align: justify; line-height: 21px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“You shouldn’t get to call yourself an American company only when you want a handout from the American taxpayers,” President Obama <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/economy/article/Obama-wants-limits-on-inversion-tax-loophole-5645775.php#/0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">said </a>Thursday.He was referring to American corporations now busily acquiring foreign companies in order to become non-American, thereby reducing their U.S. tax bill.But the President might as well have been talking about all large American multinationals. Only about a <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9169678/IBM_stops_disclosing_U.S.headcount_data" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">fifth</a> of IBM’s worldwide employees are American, for example, and only <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business/21602237-flags-inconvenience" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">40</a> percent of GE’s. Most of Caterpillar’s recent hires and investments have been made outside the US.In fact, since 2000, almost every big American multinational corporation has created more jobs outside the United States than inside. If you add in their foreign sub-contractors, the foreign total is even higher.At the same time, though, many foreign-based companies have been creating jobs in the United States. They now employ around <a href="http://www.ofii.org/issues" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">6 million </a>Americans, and account for almost 20 percent of U.S. exports. Even a household brand like Anheuser-Busch, the nation’s best-selling beer maker, employing thousands of Americans, is <a href="denied:companyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/business/18excerpt.html?pagewanted=all&r=0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">foreign</a> (part of Belgian-based beer giant InBev).Meanwhile, foreign investors are buying an increasing number of shares in American corporations, and American investors are buying up foreign stocks.Who’s us? Who’s them?Increasingly, corporate nationality is whatever a corporation decides it is.  So instead of worrying about who’s American and who’s not, here’s a better idea: Create incentives for any global company to do what we’d like it to do in the United States.For example, “American” corporations get generous tax credits and subsidies for research and development, courtesy of American taxpayers.But in reducing these corporations’ costs of R&D in the United States, those tax credits and subsidies can end up providing extra money for them to do more R&D abroad.3M is building research centers overseas at a faster clip than it’s expanding them in America. Its CEO <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB30001424052970204468004577167003809336394" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">explained</a> this was “in preparation for a world where the West is no longer the dominant manufacturing power.”3M is hardly alone. Since the early 2000s, most of the growth in the number of R&D workers employed by U.S.-based multinational companies have been in their foreign operations, according to the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970204468004577167003809336394?mod=googlenews_wsj&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052970204468004577167003809336394.html%3Fmod%3Dgooglenews_wsj" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">National Science Board</a>, the policy-making arm of the National Science Foundation.It would make more sense to limit R&D tax credits and subsidies to additional R&D done in the U.S. over and above current levels – and give them to any global corporation increasing its R&D in America, regardless of the company’s nationality.Or consider Ex-Im Bank subsidies – a topic of hot debate in Washington these days. These subsidies are intended to boost exports of American corporations from the United States.Tea Party Republicans call them “corporate welfare,” and Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans call them sensible investments. But regardless, they’re going to “American” multinationals that are making things all over the world.That means any subsidy that boosts their export earnings in the United States indirectly subsidizes their investments abroad – including, very possibly, their exports from foreign nations.GE, a major Ex-Im Bank beneficiary, has been teaming up with China to produce a <a href="http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=2962" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">new jetliner</a> there that will compete with Boeing for global business. (Boeing, not incidentally, is another Ex-Im beneficiary). In fact, GE is giving its Chinese partner the same leading-edge avionics technologies operating Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. Caterpillar, another Ex-Im Bank beneficiary, is providing engine funnels and hydraulics to <a href="http://www.caterpillar.com/en/news/caterpillarNews/h/caterpillar-celebrates-grand-opening-of-facility-expansion-at-wuxi-rd-center.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Chinese firms</a> that eventually will be exporting large moving equipment from China. Presumably they’ll be competing in global markets with Caterpillar itself.Rather than subsidize “American” exporters, it makes more sense to subsidize any global company – to the extent it’s adding to its exports from the United States.Which brings us back to American companies that are morphing into foreign companies in order to lower their U.S. tax bill.“I don’t care if it’s legal,” said the President. “It’s wrong.”It’s just as wrong for American corporations to hide their profits abroad – which many are doing simply by setting up foreign subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions, and then making it seem as if the foreign subsidiary is earning the money.Caterpillar, for example, saved $2.4 billion between 2000 and 2012 by funneling its global parts business through a Swiss subsidiary (a ruse so audacious that one of its tax consultants<a href="denied:%20%20%20http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/business/at-hearing-caterpillar-defends-tax-practices.html?r=0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">warned</a> Caterpillar executives to “get ready to do some dancing” when called before Congress to justify it).  And what about American corporations that avoid U.S. taxes by never bringing home what they legitimately earn abroad – a sum now estimated to be in the order of $1.6 trillion?Rather than focus on the newly-fashionable tax-avoidance strategy of changing corporate nationality, it makes more sense to tax any global corporation on all income earned in the United States (with high penalties for shifting that income abroad), and no longer tax “American” corporations on revenues earned outside America. Most other nations already follow this principle. In other words, let’s stop worrying about whether big global corporations are “American.” We can’t win that game. Focus instead on what we want global corporations of whatever nationality to do in America, and on how we can get them to do it.</div>http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/senator-caterpillar-avoided-billions-taxes-23132918=ucs

<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;">Caterpillar Inc, despite its public commitment to sustainability, also worked behind the scenes to block action on climate change. The company spent more than $16m (£10.3m) on lobbying during the study, with nearly five times as much of that spent lobbying to block climate action than on pro-environmental policies.

Fourteen companies were inconsistent in regard

to their statements about climate change. While

all companies in our sample stated they were

taking voluntary internal action to reduce carbon

emissions, half of them also misrepresented some

element of established climate science in their

public communications. These companies included

Ameren Corporation, Chesapeake Energy Corporation,

ConocoPhillips, DTE Energy Company, Exxon

Mobil Corporation, FMC Corporation, Marathon

Oil Corporation, Murphy Oil Corporation, Occidental

Petroleum Corporation, Peabody Energy

Corporation, Progress Energy, Inc., TECO Energy,

Inc., Valero Energy Corporation, and Waste Management,

Inc.

...

Caterpillar Inc. (Figure 11, p. 29) provides an

example of contradictory actions among companies

from the industrials sector. Caterpillar boasts

about its strong commitment to sustainability,

including climate change mitigation strategies,

on its website. In its SEC Form 10-K, the company

noted that it had continued “its commitment to

make sustainable development a ‘strategic area

of improvement’” and it highlighted its recognition

as a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability

World Index for nine consecutive years (SEC 2009)

(see Appendix C).

Behind this climate-concerned

public image, however, Caterpillar serves on the

boards of two outspokenly anti-climate-science

trade groups (the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

and the National Association of Manufacturers)

and it funds the Cato Institute and the Heritage

Foundation, two think tanks that misrepresent

climate science (Oreskes and Conway 2010)