FIORINA: That’s exactly the point. If the tax rate were lowered on businesses in this country, businesses would bring money back. The reason they cannot bring money back is because the tax rate is so onerous –

STEPHANOPOULOS: Not if they can pay no taxes for leaving them overseas; [Fiorina stutters] which is the way the law is right now.

Right, so lower the tax to zero for bringing money back into the country and raise the tax for leaving it outside. Is this so hard?

2. The ability to place profits in tax sheltered companies outside the United States actually constitutes an improper sheltering of profits overseas. In most cases, there is absolutely no economic justification for incorporating the shell company other than tax evasion.

3. Many times the companies will actually transfer technical data and patents to the offshore shell company. This is leased back to the US company at exorbitant prices (especially with government contractors) to shelter US profit.

4. Merely retraining workers will not offset the desire to offshore work. This is labor arbitrage, pure and simple. First the manufacturing goes, next the supporting engineering, then the design engineering. I have been in aerospace, you end up losing your ability to compete in that technology.

5. The US has really failed to develop really new products. Think of robotics, the technology was developed in the US but not exploited by US companies. Japanese companies ran with the ball and dominated the field. Today, European companies still maintain high tech manufacturing industries as do some of the more advance Asian countries. China is certainly trying to go that way. An advanced nation maintains its lead by developing products that may be sold at a substantial margin because it is new, better quality and sufficient to maintain the work force in the manufacturing country.

6. The continue outsourcing of manufacturing, engineering and other activities merely deprives the home country of a market for such skills. Eventually, the ability of the country to compete is reduced. Those US companies will find themselves replaced by or moving to those foreign countries that do the manufacturing and product development. Eventually, the investors in the US companies will lose control and a majority of their investment.