Global Corporations Have No Allegiance to US, Move Headquarters and Divisions Overseas

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

If you want to debunk the myth of American corporations - as a group - coming to the salvation of the US economy, you need to go no further than following the daily, financial news.

On January 13, The Chicago Tribune reported that Aon Corporation, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, is moving its headquarters from the "Windy City" to London. Significantly, Aon "will change its jurisdiction of incorporation from Delaware to England." What that means is that the Aon giant will no longer be a US-based company (although it will maintain a subsidiary here).

According to the Tribune, "the [insurance] brokerage said the move will provide it with increased financial flexibility and improved capital allocation."

What that means in reality and symbolically is that Aon is representative of the increasing number of American corporations that see themselves as global companies, not beholden to the American job market. It is ironic that the Republican Party that continues to uphold "big business" as job creators is, in essence, backing corporations that now see themselves as not bound to the United States, even as far as incorporation.

These "job creators" are now not necessarily associated with national allegiance; they are boundary-less. That is why companies like Apple contract with exploitative manufacturers such as Foxconn in China, where conditions are so harsh and dire - and the laborers so underpaid - that threatened and actual suicide by workers has been carried out as a last "remedy."

Meanwhile, these colossal corporations are, as BuzzFlash at Truthout has noted, crushing small businesses in the US by taking advantage of lower wage production - and service industries - overseas.

Aon, according to David Prosperi - the company's vice president of global public relations - is moving its headquarters and reincorporating in the UK as "a decision based on our [its] global growth strategy."

Soon the US Chamber of Commerce will need to reincorporate in China as the Global Chamber of Commerce, as the American worker gets left further and further behind.