The Latest from Subsidy Tracker

May 28, 2014

Earlier this year, my colleagues and I at Good Jobs First introduced a major overhaul of our Subsidy Tracker database. The big change in Tracker 2.0 was the addition of parent company information for entries representing three-quarters of the total dollar value of the dataset. This allowed us to document for the first time the outsized share of subsidy awards received by big business.

In the past three months we have been enhancing the enhancements. We have increased from 965 to 1,294 the number of matched parent companies, which together are linked to more than 31,000 individual awards with a total value of more than $113 billion. Our parent coverage now extends to the full Fortune 1000 as well as the Fortune Global 500, the Forbes list of the largest privately held companies, the Private Equity International list of the top 50 private equity firms (and their portfolio companies) and the Uniworld list of the 300 largest foreign firms doing business in the United States.

Each parent company has its own summary page, which can be accessed through a drop-down menu at the top of the Tracker search form. These pages include cumulative totals for the subsidies received by the company and all its units and subsidiaries; the states in which it has received the most awards; and a list of all the individual awards that went into those totals. Those lists are sortable and downloadable, and they include links to pages with details on the individual entries.

Since the release of 2.0 we have added a variety of new features to the parent summary pages, including indications of the time period covered by the data and the following identifying information: the company’s ownership structure, the location of its headquarters and its primary industry group. (See below for a summary of what these identifiers show.) We have also begun to add other key info sources on the companies, beginning with links (where available) to the firms’ CTJ-ITEP Tax Dodgers pages and to our Corporate Rap Sheets.

Along with the parent pages, we’ve created summary pages for each of the states and the District of Columbia. They show cumulative totals, the parent companies with the most awards and a sortable and downloadable list of all the listings for the state. The top states in terms of cumulative disclosed subsidy awards are New York ($21 billion), Washington ($13 billion) and Michigan ($10 billion).

We have not neglected the task of gathering new data. Led by my colleague Kasia Tarczynska, our effort to find new online and unpublished data has during these past three months resulted in 13,000 new listings, bringing our total to 258,000. Kasia is getting ready to implement a plan for systematically filing FOIA requests for missing data with state and key local agencies.

NEW CUMULATIVE SUMMARY DATA FOR SUBSIDY TRACKER PARENT COMPANIES

Top Parent Companies:

  • Boeing: $13.2 billion
  • Alcoa: $5.6 billion
  • Intel: $3.9 billion
  • General Motors: $3.6 billion
  • Ford Motor: $2.5 billion

Top Industry Groups:

  • Aerospace & military contracting: $14.3 billion
  • Motor vehicles: $13.9 billion
  • Steel & other metals: $8.2 billion
  • Semiconductors: $5.7 billion
  • Oil & gas: $5.3 billion

Top States Based on the Location of Parent Company Headquarters:

  • Illinois: $16.2 billion
  • New York: $13.6 billion
  • Michigan: $8.4 billion
  • California: $8.0 billion
  • Texas: $4.5 billion

Foreign Countries Whose Companies have Received the Most Subsidies for their U.S. Affiliates:

  • Japan: $5.3 billion
  • Germany: $2.4 billion
  • Netherlands: $2.2 billion
  • Italy: $2.1 billion
  • Canada: $1.8 billion

Subsidy Tracker 2.0 has a wealth of new information. Check it out today.