Why bring them back and pay a 10% tax when they can leave the money offshore and pay nothing?
Because unless they can invest it in their businesses overeas, it’s sitting there doing nothing, or most probably the tax rate on the parked money is lower than our current tax rate. It’s effectively dead money at the moment for many of these companies.
Because where it currently resides (pick a country, France, Germany, Mexico? Anywhere in Africa? South America? Central America) the prospects of getting a return on that money is slim to none, and slim is coming back to the USA. If they did invest it, or reinvest it abroad, they are more likely to lose money than they are to make money.
On the other hand, the predicted future for companies' growth under the new MAGA administration is tremendous. They would get that 10% back many times over in a very short period of time. And for those companies abroad that have been importing back into the USA tariff-free, they face the prospect of having an average of a 35% tariff placed on their products sold here. Not so if/when they re-import their profits and operations back to the USA.