The net would be much smaller were other forms of corporate welfare such as subsidies, erased corporate debts to Uncle Sam, giveaways and bailouts to be subtracted. Of course, small businesses don't have such complex shelters to avoid taxes. When small businesses get into trouble, they are free to go bankrupt, unlike speculating, mismanaged or corrupt big businesses that can go to Washington for a complex bailout. There is more to collectively understand. The WTO undermines our legitimate local state and national sovereignties which enable America to lead the way in worker, consumer, environmental standards.
Global corporations command the capital, technology, labor and many governments.
The big drug companies avoid research into global infectious diseases, such as malaria and TB, that claim millions of lives a year and are heading to our shores in drug resistant form. Despite adverse publicity over their duplicitous behavior, the tobacco companies are straining to hook every possible youngster in the Third World with portents of massive cancer and other tobacco-related deaths yearly. The munitions makers are busy expanding their lethal export trade, using your tax dollars in the form of subsidies. The food processing giants and the fast food chains are busy displacing indigenous foods with fat and sugar pumps a la McDonalds fast food. At the same time, the biotechnology companies drive to change the nature of nature without answering basic scientific or need questions.