President Barack Obama’s choice of Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, to chair the newly-created President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness has drawn criticism for many reasons.

 

GE is a model for what’s wrong with corporate America these days, writes Shahien Nasiripour at The Huffington Post. It’s a company “that’s hoarding cash, sending jobs overseas, relying on taxpayer bailouts and paying less taxes than envisioned.”

 

On the issue of shipping jobs overseas, GE’s actions are particularly glaring. The company regularly tops the list of transnational corporations ranked by the size of their foreign asset holdings, as it receives more of its revenues and profits from abroad than from its U.S. operations. Also, the majority of its 304,000 employees are based overseas.

 

Between 2005 and 2009, the U.S. employee share of GE’s total workforce dropped from 51% to 44%. In 2009 and 2010, GE shuttered 28 manufacturing plants in the U.S.

 

Dave Lindorff at This Can’t Be Happening says GE “is not an American company. It is a foreign company that happens to be headquartered in the U.S.”

 

Last year, GE paid taxes at a rate of only 14.3%.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Here's One for the Birthers: Is GE's Jeffrey Immelt Really an American? (This Can’t be Happening)

Obama Picks Jeffrey Immelt, GE CEO, To Run New Jobs-Focused Panel As GE Sends Jobs Overseas, Pays Little In Taxes (by Shahien Nasiripour, Huffington Post)

Corporations Have Easy Time Beating Tax Code (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)