Georgia Republican Senate candidate David Perdue wants companies to be incentivized to bring funds made abroad back to the United States but says that the government shouldn’t dictate how corporations use the money once it is here.
“I don’t want a federal government dictating to companies what they have to or don’t have to do,” he said during an interview with NBC News.
Perdue, who has been hammered by Democratic opponent Michelle Nunn for outsourcing he conducted as a CEO, said that the repatriation tax traps millions of dollars in foreign banks that would otherwise be injected into the American economy. But, asked how to ensure that those funds actually benefit everyday Americans, Perdue said it should be left up to companies themselves.
“I think you have to depend on a capitalistic system. Even if you were to give the money to shareholders, that money gets turned around and reinvested again,” he said. “That capital works its way through the economy either way."
The former Dollar General CEO said that attacks related to outsourcing are a distraction.
"A lot of people are critical about this outsourcing idea, but the issue is - at Dollar General, for example, we created almost 20,000 jobs in a very short period of time and we outsourced all of the products and services we sold in the stores," he said. "Most of those, all of those, practically, were made in the United States."
"I just think it's an intent to distract away from the critical issues in this particular campaign, and that is people are not working at the rate that they should be working," he added.
NBC's Carrie Dann contributed