El-Sayed wants buybacks banned as crypto spends record sums on them

Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat in Michigan’s November 3 Senate race, wrote on X on Wednesday calling for stock buybacks to be outlawed, criticizing GM leadership for prioritizing shareholder returns and executive compensation over workers and new products. His post followed General Motors’ $20 billion repurchase. The United Auto Workers union, which endorsed El-Sayed, called that buyback the largest in U.S. automaker history, and Republican opponent Mike Rogers also criticized GM. El-Sayed’s proposal targets public companies buying their own shares, so it would affect traditional corporate buybacks but not crypto token buybacks, in which protocols use trading revenue to buy and often burn their own tokens; that practice has reached a record $638 million.