📅 On This Day
U.S.-China Tariffs Hit Consumer Goods, Rattling Dividend Payers
On September 1, 2019, the fourth and broadest round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods took effect, sweeping in more than $300 billion in imports — consumer electronics, apparel, and footwear that earlier rounds had left untouched. China retaliated immediately, and companies like Apple, Nike, and Walmart warned of margin compression from rising input costs. For dividend investors, the escalation was a reminder of how geopolitics can reach directly into capital allocation decisions.
The trade war had moved from factory floors to the consumer's shopping cart — and corporate dividend budgets felt the tremor.
🇺🇸 US
Source: U.S. Trade Representative; Reuters
🌍 Around the World
Singapore Offers Global Dividend Investors a Zero Withholding Rate
Under Singapore's one-tier corporate tax system, dividends reach shareholders — local or foreign — with zero withholding tax, no treaty required and no reclaim forms to chase. That simplicity makes S-REITs and Singapore's banks and telecoms unusually efficient income vehicles for global portfolios. Individual investors keep every cent declared; foreign institutional investors in certain S-REIT structures may encounter a 10% rate on specific income types, but for most retail holders the number is genuinely zero.
No forms, no reclaim queues — Singapore's dividend mechanics are about as frictionless as income investing gets.
🇸🇬 SG
Source: Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore; SGX investor education
🔥 Dividend Streak
McDonald's Reaches Dividend King Status After 50 Consecutive Increases
When Ray Kroc declared McDonald's first dividend in 1976 — a split-adjusted figure of less than a tenth of a penny per share — few could have imagined where the golden arches were headed. Seven stock splits and fifty annual raises later, that payout stands at $1.86 per share, a journey the company's fact sheet describes as a 310,000% rise. In 2026, McDonald's formally earned its place among Dividend Kings, a title reserved for those with half a century of unbroken increases.
From $0.0006 to $1.86 — MCD's dividend history is a quiet monument to compounding patience.
MCD — McDonald’s CDR (CAD Hedged)
Source: Sure Dividend — Dividend Aristocrats: MCD
🔥 Dividend Streak
McDonald's Reaches Dividend King Status After 50 Consecutive Increases
When Ray Kroc declared McDonald's first dividend in 1976 — a split-adjusted figure of less than a tenth of a penny per share — few could have imagined where the golden arches were headed. Seven stock splits and fifty annual raises later, that payout stands at $1.86 per share, a journey the company's fact sheet describes as a 310,000% rise. In 2026, McDonald's formally earned its place among Dividend Kings, a title reserved for those with half a century of unbroken increases.
From $0.0006 to $1.86 — MCD's dividend history is a quiet monument to compounding patience.
MCD — McDonald’s Corporation
Source: Sure Dividend — Dividend Aristocrats: MCD
💡 Did You Know
Berkshire Hathaway Has Paid Just One Cash Dividend, Back in 1967
In 1967, Berkshire Hathaway paid shareholders ten cents a share — and then, as Buffett famously quips, 'I must have been in the bathroom when the dividend was declared.' It has never paid another. The logic lives in his 1984 shareholder letter: Berkshire keeps a dollar only if it can turn that dollar into more than a dollar of market value, deploying cash into acquisitions rather than distributing it. A public dividend, in Buffett's view, would starve the very engine that built the empire.
One dime in 1967, then silence — Berkshire's dividend history is a masterclass in deliberate restraint.
BRK.B
🇺🇸 US
Source: Berkshire Hathaway 1984 & 2012 shareholder letters