ABSTRACT
In his 2011 State of the Union Address, U.S. President Obama made a commitment to doubling America’s exports by 2014 to help rebalance America’s longstanding trade deficit. Yet most large American Fortune 500 companies already have significant overseas presence and export capabilities. Hollywood banks on international sales that amount to roughly 60 percent of its $27 billion in revenues. 1 Apple manufactures all of its products abroad through contract manufacturers, which famously adds to the American trade deficit even though Apple captures most of its products’ value. 2 UNCTAD found that General Electric was the world’s largest “transnational” firm (with more than 50 percent of sales, assets, and employees abroad) so that its “transnationality” index (TNI) was 52.2 percent. The TNI rating of other quintessentially “American” firms is high: Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) was 60.2 percent, Coca-Cola’s 74.3 percent, Ford’s 54.3 percent, General Motors’ 48.7 percent, and Wal-Mart’s, though just 31.2 percent, is increasingly rapidly. General Motors fell just below the 50 percent threshold, but in 2010 GM sold more cars in China than in the United States. 3
