Reject Biden’s Global Tax Cartel

One-hundred-and-thirty-five countries agreed today to the global tax deal that Joe Biden and Janet Yellen have long wanted. The arrangement would establish a global minimum corporate-tax rate of 15 percent and reduce the sovereignty of countries to make their own tax policy. That includes the sovereignty of the United States, and Congress should do everything in its power to scuttle this deal.

For a long time, many on the left have decried the “race to the bottom” in corporate taxes.

The problem with that argument is that it hasn’t happened. What has been derided as a race to the bottom in reality has been more of a slow glide to the middle. Over the past 40 years, corporate tax rates have slowly declined across the board, and the worldwide average in the past ten years has settled right around 25 percent. The distribution has also become less variable over that span: The most common statutory rates globally are between 20 and 25 percent.

The United States used to be far above the global average. The federal statutory corporate-tax rate was 35 percent until the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced it to 21 percent, where it currently stands.

The domestic political agenda behind Biden and Yellen’s global antics is obvious.

Our Constitution also puts the power to approve treaties in the hands of the Senate and subjects such approval to a two-thirds vote threshold. Senators Pat Toomey, Mike Crapo, and Jim Risch have expressed concern that the Biden administration will circumvent that requirement.

The last thing we need is a rerun of the Iran deal, which President Obama put into effect over the objections of a bipartisan majority of senators.

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