In 2018, U.S. companies brought home $664.9 billion of their overseas profits, marking a sharp increase from 2017’s $155.1 billion. President Donald Trump’s one-time tax cut – from 35% to 15.5% - on repatriated offshore cash seems to have pushed corporations towards the dramatic increase in the amount of profits they brought back to the U.S. Still, the amount repatriated was shy of Trump’s expectations of $4 trillion.
Share buybacks, which hit a record $1.1 trillion last year, accounted for the majority of spending out of the cash brought back, as suggested by a Federal Reserve study last year.