It's apparently easier to type the post than to Google and read a few lines. Repatriate means, basically, "send home."
Companies repatriate their profits frequently. At least some do. But they pay higher taxes on it here than there, so often it's in their best interests to keep their profits offshore. That lets them redistribute them as necessary to build or invest abroad, if necessary. But it also helps their net worth here. Often those profits are earned overseas. Americans get really surly when profits made overseas by US companies aren't taxed here; they also get really surly when profits made here by overseas companies aren't taxed here. At most one of those gets my respect.
Another source of profits held overseas is the US: An offshore company makes the money here and its tax liabilities are overseas, which may mean "in the Caribbean." The word we have for this is "tax avoidance," if it's done legally. And "tax evasion," if it's done illegally.
We had a repatriation amnesty once before, where all sorts of penalties were waived and a lower tax rate charged. That reaped a mess of money for the government and cash-flush corporations suddenly really did have cash on hand for doing things with. Those against this "holiday" suddenly discovered the concept of "opportunity cost"--what could you have gotten if you hadn't done something else. The typical example is simple: Bank interest is 3.5%, return on investment in a company is 1%, return on investment in an employee is 0.1%? Where do you put your money? Are you in business to be kind to strangers or feed your family and raise your kids, to "horde opportunities" for your own group? The easy answer is "bank."
If they hadn't had the special repatriation provisions, these Wunderkinder calculated, many more billions of dollars would have been harvested. (They got the 'opportunity cost' concept wrong, of course; the assumptions behind the opportunity cost have to be reasonable, not idealistic and pollyannish, and the proper role of government is to be thuggish with some citizens in order to help others.)
One thing to watch out, for, though, is that many of the numbers you see bandied about are fake: They are the total amount of profits held overseas in any form. That includes cash, stuff that can easily be repatriated. Often, though, when you get advocates crunching the numbers, it includes the investment in things and property: You have $10 billion in "profits," but that includes the $1.5 billion invested in a new factory and equipment. That's not going to be repatriated, but some are so into being punitive they think somehow it should be or if not it should be taxed as though it were. No, the numbers don't often come with footnotes or even error bars saying if they're reasonable or thuggish, because they're not intended to inform but outrage or force public policy in the short term.
By "make our country stronger," do you mean military spending? Or stronger in the same way that, say, Sweden is stronger?
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