availability to this cash. I was using investment in the general sense. In apple's case, that happened to be investing in shareholder capital return which they COULDN'T do previously with the overseas cash without incurring a 35% penalty (so they instead borrowed to get around the tax law). Apple also announced the would be spending $350 billion (that's billion with a b) and create 20,000 new jobs in the US over the next 5 years. That feels like investment along the lines of what you would like to see. Could Apple have continued to borrow in order to fund this investment without the tax law change. Probably, but Apple is a bit of a unique beast and many companies do not quite have the same level of borrowing capacity. And certainly the change in the tax law made this investment a lot easier and more straightforward.

There are plenty of companies with overseas cash that prior to the tax changes would specifically look for overseas acquisitions to allow them to invest in growth using their overseas cash without incurring a huge repatriation tax hit. I've worked for a few who did exactly that. With the new corporate tax law, a lot more investment opportunities are opened up (including acquisitions in the US and investment in organic growth in the US)