CEO Club Briefing

Edward D. Breen

Chairman and CEO, DuPont

Edward D. Breen

Chairman and CEO, DuPont

Repatriation of US Money

Excerpt from remarks to Boston College Chief Executives Club  

December 8, 2016

TAKEAWAY: REPATRIATION OF US MONEY

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I guess we can't let you escape without a comment on how you see the national picture potentially impacting you. I guess you're not worried about it, right?

BREEN:
Well, no, I'm actually not. I'd say, look, some of the things we're hearing right now—if they happen, I'm all for them. So obviously tax reform would be huge. And I think this country on the—forget the individual, which I think needs to be done, too, but on the corporate side, we're uncompetitive with our tax rate. It's just a shame to watch. And every company has their operations set up so they can get their tax rate down as low as they can. We just need to clean it up and get on with it—get a tax rate that's competitive with the rest of the world. So I think that's huge for every business.

Again, I don't know if it'll happen, but if we could repatriate the $3 trillion to $4 trillion that's sitting overseas in all of our bank accounts, I think the influx—I mean, think of it—our national debt's around $20 trillion, and there's $3 trillion to $4 trillion just sitting, not in the US doing anything. So if we could bring that back, I think what that would unleash would be unbelievable. So I think that's another big one I'd like to see, and it sounds like that's being talked about now. So that's just a couple of them I think would be enormous.