Yes, but these are American companies, not Australian. The move is a favour to Washington, not Australian businesses. Australia has been an extraordinary cash c

Yes, but these are American companies, not Australian. The move is a favour to Washington, not Australian businesses. Australia has been an extraordinary cash cow for global businesses for a few years [1] although the AUD being hammered more recently has diminished the advantage somewhat. The reason it's important is that politically, local stuff is always much more valuable than scratching the back of foreigners. Take the JSF: it was pure lobbying genius by Lockheed to locate its supply chain in what, 47 states (and 9 countries). If you want to try and make that supply program more efficient, you're going to have to ask a representative to tell his electorate that 2,000 jobs are about to get axed in his state. These kind of things need to be killed before they get started, they are impossible to stop afterwards. But then you get things like Rick Santorum trying to stop the National Weather Service from publishing data publicly for free after getting just $11,000 from AccuWeather (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Duties_Act_of_2005 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Dutie...). [1] I know a large, publicly listed retailer who made 40% of their GLOBAL profits from Australia in 2012. RRP was 50% higher there, and they offered free shipping. That company was present in at least 20 countries and based in Europe. The AU office was a couple of guys to answer any questions with local shipment companies - they didn't even have an Australian warehouse...