IBM Lays Out Plans to Hire 25,000 in U.S. Ahead of Trump Meeting

IBM CEO, Ginny Rometty

From MSN:

IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty said she plans to hire about 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years, laying out her vision for filling technology jobs in America on the eve of a meeting of industry leaders with President-elect Donald Trump. 

Rometty, who is on Trump’s advisory panel of business leaders, will join Facebook Inc.’s Sheryl Sandberg, Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos and Alphabet Inc.’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt at a summit with Trump Wednesday in New York that is said to focus on jobs.

Why are so many companies suddenly announcing big plans to expand and hire in the United States?

Let's look at an article from the MSM-pantywaist, January 2016 NYT:

Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? Credit Illustration by Andrew Rae There is an economic mystery I’ve been struggling to understand for quite some time, and I’m not the only one who’s confused: 

Among financial experts, it is often referred to as a conundrum, a paradox, a puzzle. The mystery is as follows: Collectively, American businesses currently have $1.9 trillion in cash, just sitting around. 

Not only is this state of affairs unparalleled in economic history, but we don’t even have much data to compare it with, because corporations have traditionally been borrowers, not savers. 

One camp believes that a large cash hoard is a sign of an unhealthy company. Maybe its whole industry is doing so poorly that there is nothing worth investing in; maybe it’s because executives are up to something shady, stockpiling cash as a personal war chest to mask poor decision-making and protect their jobs (cash in the bank, suddenly deployed, can make a firm seem more profitable than it actually is). 

The other camp doubts that the free market could be allowing executives to hold all that cash if it were purely for their own benefit.

Then there is the more Free Enterprise-oriented Forbes Magazine:

There is an economic mystery I’ve been struggling to understand for quite some time, and I’m not the only one who’s confused. Among financial experts, it is often referred to as a conundrum, a paradox, a puzzle. 

The mystery is as follows. Collectively, American businesses currently have $1.9 trillion in cash, just sitting around. Nope, it's not a puzzle, not a conundrum and not even a paradox. Because: Eight of the biggest U.S. technology companies added a combined $69 billion to their stockpiled offshore profits over the past year, even as some corporations in other industries felt pressure to bring cash back home. Microsoft MSFT +1.32% Corp., Apple AAPL +1.67% Inc., Google GOOGL +0.96% Inc. and five other tech firms now account for more than a fifth of the $2.10 trillion in profits that U.S. companies are holding overseas, according to a Bloomberg News review of the securities filings of 304 corporations. 

It's the tax system and that's all it is. 

If a U.S. company makes profits elsewhere in the world then it pays U.S. corporate income tax, minus foreign taxes paid, on bringing that money back into the U.S. If they want to invest it in the U.S. or do a stock buyback or pay a dividend, then they must so bring it back into the U.S. If they park it offshore then they do not pay that U.S. corporate income tax. Apple has until recently only been paying 2% foreign tax on its foreign profits. To bring that back would thus cost it some 33% of the profits in U.S. tax. So, it doesn't.

Donald Trump promises to fix this system.

These corporations are intending to hire. I'm sure they won't do so if people like Ryan and McConnell block Trump's plans.

Given that Americans are thirsty, like people wandering a desert, for good economic times to once again arise, I think McConnell and Ryan are not going to get their way.