While multinationals may be less inclined to sell their corporate bonds, at least initially, the impact could be more acute, analysts say. In recent years, firms such as Apple and Oracle Corp. have become some of the top buyers of company debt. Apple alone holds over $150 billion in the bonds, exceeding even the world’s biggest debt funds. The market itself is also less liquid, which means it takes far less to move the needle.

Big corporations could dispose of a “few hundred billion” dollars of their total debt investments, said Aaron Kohli, strategist at BMO Capital Markets.

Repatriation has come back into focus ever since President Donald Trump signed the tax overhaul into law in December. Besides reducing taxes across the board, it did away with a decades-old provision that allowed companies to put off paying taxes on foreign profits until they brought the money home.

Of course, it’s important to understand that for most multinationals, offshore cash is really only “offshore” for accounting purposes. Under the old tax system, earnings attributed to foreign subsidiaries, often based in jurisdictions with low taxes or lax regulations like Ireland or Luxembourg, could be repatriated and remain earmarked as “held overseas” -- so long as it was stashed in U.S. securities. Apple, for example, manages its hoard from Reno, Nevada, where its internal investment firm, Braeburn Capital, is located.

“The term overseas cash can be a bit of a misnomer, as it doesn’t have to be overseas and in fact a lot of it isn’t,” said Michael Cahill, a strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. That should limit any appreciation in the dollar related to repatriation over the longer term.

Now, multinationals have eight years to pay a one-time tax on the accumulated income. Foreign earnings held as cash or equivalents -- previously taxed at a 35 percent rate when repatriated -- would be subject to a 15.5 percent rate. Non-liquid assets would be taxed at 8 percent.

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“Most multinationals will no longer tie themselves up in knots with their Treasury function with a big pile of cash that’s trapped in a foreign corporation and invested in securities and that they can’t use,” said Richard Harvey, a former top tax official at the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department, who now teaches tax law at Villanova University.

Goldman’s Cahill predicts corporate cash will be a hot topic on conference calls as earnings season heats up. Any repatriation will likely come from money already parked in U.S. securities.

“Repatriation headlines from the earning calls could cause investors to react,” Cahill said.