GE CEO Immelt blasts Sanders over Wall Street greed comments

General Electric’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt on Thursday blasted Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) for saying the company represents the corporate greed of Wall Street.

Immelt criticized Sanders for never visiting GE’s Vermont businesses, for failing to recognize the firm’s contributions to bolstering U.S.-manufacturing, for not understanding that global companies must have outposts in other countries and for falsely asserting that the multi-national business pays zero in taxes. 

{mosads}“GE has been in business for 124 years, and we’ve never been a big hit with socialists,” Immelt wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Thursday.

On Monday, Sanders told the New York Daily News editorial board that GE is among the companies “destroying the moral fabric” of America after he was asked to cite examples of corporate greed on Wall Street.

“What corporate America has shown us in the last number of years, what Wall Street has shown us, the only thing that matters is their profits and their money,” the Vermont Independent said. “And the hell with the rest of the people of this country.”

But Immelt argued that he is “proud of all that we do, and how it all figures into ‘the moral fabric’ of America is so plain to me.”

“It seems Sen. Sanders is missing the point,” he said. 

Immelt said that it is easy for Sanders to “make hollow campaign promises and take cheap shots in speeches and during editorial board sessions, but U.S. companies have to deliver for their employees, customers and shareholders every day.”

He questioned Sanders’s complaints with GE’s operations abroad “as though a company that has customers in more than 180 countries should have no presence in any of them.”

“Nor does he mention that our sales around the world support our manufacturing base here at home, along with the thousands of U.S. companies in our supply chain,” he said.

GE annually exports more than $20 billion worth of American-made goods to the rest of the world, Immelt said.

“You want to cause big problems for our suppliers — many of whom are small and medium-size businesses — and their workers? The surest way would be to pull out of those countries and lose those customers.”

Immelt said that Sanders’s repeated assertions that GE doesn’t pay taxes is untrue.

“Repeating a lie over and over does not make it true,” he said.

“We pay billions in taxes, including federal, state and local taxes. The U.S. tax system has not been updated in 30 years and isn’t designed for today’s economy, which is why we support comprehensive tax reform — even if it raises our tax rate.”

Immelt also criticized the U.S. tax code’s ability to back U.S. businesses. 

“We are competing globally with foreign companies whose governments care whether they win and support them in innumerable ways.” he said.

“U.S. companies continue to wrestle with an outdated and complex tax code that puts them at a distinct competitive disadvantage.”

Immelt knocked Sanders for complaining about but never visiting GE’s aviation plant in Rutland, Vt., where he said more than $100 million in investments have been made in recent years and where more than 1,000 people are employed churning out jet-engine components in a business that has held a presence in the state since the 1950s.

He said Sanders also hasn’t stopped by GE Healthcare, which employs more than 340 men and women in South Burlington and does about $40 million worth of business with dozens of suppliers of parts and services across Vermont.

“We take risks, invest, innovate and produce in ways that today sustain 125,000 U.S. jobs,” Immelt wrote.

“Our pride, history and hard work are real — the moral fabric of America,” he said. 

Nationwide, GE has 200 plants, including 15 that were built in the past five years.