Harley-Davidson took its tax cut, closed a factory, and rewarded shareholders
Harley-Davidson is one of a string of companies to announce major share buybacks since the tax bill was passed in December.
Apple in early May said it would buy back $100 billion of its shares. The tech conglomerate Cisco in February
said it would put an additional $25 billion toward a stock buyback.
Troubled megabank Wells Fargo in January announced
about $22 billion in buybacks. Pepsi
announced a $15 billion buyback, Amgen and AbbVie $10 billion, and Google’s parent company Alphabet $8.6 billion.
Harley-Davidson isn’t the only company to shutter a US plant since the tax cuts were passed in December. The same day Kansas City workers found out their plant was closing, about 900 workers at an
Electrolux plant in St. Cloud, Minnesota, found out the facility they were working in would be shutting down too. The Swedish home appliance company will consolidate its freezer production in South Carolina, where Joe Baratta, a representative for International Association of Machinists (IAM) Local 623, told me starting wages are lower.
He described a recent trip to Home Depot. “I see products that we were building here last year that say ‘Made in China’ with the Frigidaire name on it, they’re already in stores,” he said. “It’s a tough pill to swallow to go into every store in town looking at a product and saying, ‘There’s 150 jobs we lost. There’s another 200 jobs we lost.’”
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/comp...d-rewarded-shareholders/ar-AAxD6bK?ocid=ientp
TRUMP IS A LOSER.
