I was posting in a diary and one of the comments used the John Kerry quote of Benedict Arnold CEOs, describing corporate leaders who do not take into account the best interests of the USA. I thought my answer was worth expanding and posting as a diary.
US public companies are, by law, managed to be in the long term best interest of shareholders, not employees, not communities, not the USA, not suppliers, not any other stakeholders. This is a legal requirement that is very constraining. This requirement is very strict in Delaware, a state that is "home" to the charters of half the public companies in the US. Other states, like Indiana, give boards of directors the legal right to consider employees, communities, and other stakeholders in their decisions. As a community it would be good to work on changing Delaware laws to give corporations the ability to look beyond just the long term best interest of shareholders when making decisions.
Many US headquartered companies have a majority of their revenue, profits, and employees outside of the US. Are they US companies? By law they are, but they are really multinationals.
All US public companies have shareholders from all over the world. In some cases a majority of the shares are not held by Americans.
So we have multinational companies with multinational owners. Are they US companies? Should they put the economic interests of the US first?
These are complex issues and it isn't quite as easy as the Benedict Arnold statement would suggest.