are good too (although I personally prefer dividends in most cases), but I understand that some people think they're bad for some reason.

As far as why bring the profits back.... because it provides a lot more financial flexibility. When you have the cash stranded in foreign entities you can't use that cash to pay dividends or buy back shares, or invest in the US. What many tech companies with huge overseas cash balances have done is borrow in the US to avoid paying the tax on the repatriated profits. Apple doesn't need to borrow money. They have something like $200 billion in cash. But most of it was overseas and they couldn't access it for dividends or share buy backs or for building new facilities in the US. So they borrowed in the US (at very low rates) which was a more financially advantageous approach than paying the (previously onerous) corporate tax rate to bring the cash back. With the lowered corporate tax rates, the tax burden on repatriating profits is far less and suddenly the financial flexibility it provides starts to make more sense. So companies are taking advantage of this. And that is good for US investment as Capex spending was up sharply in 2018