Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz offers advice for job creation: 'invest' to 'bring our manufacturing base back'

The United States is less than four weeks away from falling over the fiscal cliff when the nation faces automatic spending cuts and tax increases unless Congress is able to come to a deal averting it. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sat for an interview with CNN’s Poppy Harlow and he tells her his thoughts about the looming crisis.

Schultz feels that unless a deal is made, the consequences will be far worse than last year's debt ceiling fight, when the U.S. credit rating was downgraded for the first time ever. His message to lawmakers is to quit playing politics and do right by the American people. Harlow comes to “Early Start” with more on her conversation with Schultz.

One piece of advice the coffee giant shares with Harlow regards job growth. “We know there's a large sum sitting on the balance sheet of some public companies overseas,” Schultz says. “Some people have said $2-3 trillion dollars. I don't know the exact numbers, but if we repatriated that money at a lower tax rate, people would bring the money back, but I would tie the repatriation to a mandate of having to create jobs or invest in manufacturing capital equipment that would bring our manufacturing base back, or begin to.”