An obscure piece of Biden's agenda could deal a big blow to Trump's right-wing nationalism
An obscure provision of President Joe Biden's agenda could deal a big blow to one of Donald Trump's most controversial legacies.
Global minimum taxes will likely be included as part of the reconciliation deal after 130 nations reached a deal that would impose a minimum 15-percent levy on corporations on their overseas profits to stop the "race to the bottom" competition for multinational corporations and keep those companies from stashing profits in low-tax havens, reported the Washington Post.
"Right wing nationalists are supposed to hate such elite chicanery," wrote Post columnist Greg Sargent. "After all, international capital mobility and profit shifting are two key ways that multinationals have emerged as big winners from globalization. This has deprived the nation of revenue, while allowing multinationals access to elite tax avoidance strategies that ordinary Americans lack."
"You'd think this would be particularly offensive to those nationalists who preen around declaring that globalist and cosmopolitan elites have presided over the hollowing out of virtuous nonmetropolitan Real America," he added. "Yet, while such nationalists do sometimes decry this problem, there isn't a real nationalist solution to it. The answer is a multilateral one."
The Biden administration believes the tax would generate billions of dollars over the next decade, but right-wing nationalists will likely oppose it even though the 2017 Trump tax cuts tried but largely failed to recapture some overseas profits for multinationals.
"The standard right wing nationalist objection to such multilateral arrangements is they deprive U.S. citizens of agency by turning over decision-making to globalist elites," Sargent wrote. "But in this case, multilateral cooperation could prevent corporations from exploiting global mobility in ways that limit what nations can do democratically, in keeping with their own citizens' aspirations."
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