Some Common Cents for May 6th 2016

Let’s assume I am a pretty major manufacturer (high-tech) based in California, and have designed a product which I believe will sell well in the overseas markets, particularly China. In fact, I think I can sell $5 billion worth of product outside the US to start, and grow my sales 5% per year for 10 years.

If those numbers seem like funny money, consider Pfizer, who recently ditched a plan to do a corporate inversion in Ireland, got 55.6% of its 2015 fiscal year revenue from foreign markets. Put another way, the company generated $27.147 billion in revenue offshore. For its part, Apple sold $139.851 billion worth of goods & services outside of the ‘Americas’ for its same reporting year, for 59.8%. Some $58.7 billion was in so-called Greater China alone …Read On…