Employee Benefit Plans

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2017

Compensation and Retirement Disclosure [Abstract]

Pension and Other Postretirement Benefits Disclosure [Text Block]

Employee Benefit Plans

Pension and Postretirement Plans. We sponsor both funded and unfunded domestic and foreign defined pension and other postretirement benefit plans, and defined contribution plans. Contributions to our plans were as follows:

	Quarter Ended March 31,
(Dollars in millions)	2017		2016
Defined benefit plans	$	46	$	75
Defined contribution plans	90		78

There were no contributions to our domestic defined benefit pension plans in the quarters ended March 31, 2017 and 2016. The following table illustrates the components of net periodic benefit cost for our defined pension and other postretirement benefit plans:

	Pension Benefits Quarter Ended March 31,						Other Postretirement Benefits Quarter Ended March 31,
(Dollars in millions)	2017			2016			2017			2016
Service cost	$	93		$	94		$	1		$	1
Interest cost	278			302			7			8
Expected return on plan assets	(540		)	(556		)	—			—
Amortization of prior service credit	(9		)	(8		)	—			—
Recognized actuarial net loss (gain)	143			135			(3		)	(1		)
Net settlement and curtailment loss	1			12			—			—
Total net periodic benefit (income) cost	$	(34	)	$	(21	)	$	5		$	8

Effective January 1, 2017, a voluntary lump-sum option is available for the frozen final average earnings benefits of certain U.S. salaried employees upon termination of employment after 2016. This option provides participants with the choice of electing to receive a lump-sum payment in lieu of receiving a future monthly pension benefit. This plan change reduced the projected benefit obligation by $170 million.