Unfortunately, the financial crisis of 2008-2009 triggered a capital investment shortfall that continues today. Since 2008, domestic business investment, net of depreciation, has averaged only 2.8 percent of net domestic product, down from an average of 5.0 percent during President Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA)—passed in December 2017 by the Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump—failed to galvanize broad increases in capital investment. Net domestic business investment did briefly rise in late 2018 and early 2019 to 3.8 percent of net domestic product— still well below the Clinton-era levels. But the latest data, released on November 27, 2019, shows net domestic business investment plunging by 15 percent in the second and third quarters of 2019, back down to pre-TCJA levels.
Despite the broader trends, some companies stand out for their multi-billion investments in America. Since 2012 the Progressive Policy Institute has provided unique and unmatched estimates of domestic capital spending for individual major U.S. companies. Currently, accounting rules do not require companies to report their U.S. capital spending separately. To fill this gap in the data, we created a methodology using publicly-available financial statements from nonfinancial Fortune 150 companies to identify the top companies that were investing in the United States.
