GOP Makes U-Turn Regarding Retribution Against Offshoring Companies

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones points us to an article in the Washington Post by Jim Tankersley that highlights the typical double standard that Republicans have for retribution against corporations that move jobs overseas. Every single budget that President Obama proposed since 2009 included changes that in the tax code to penalize those companies that moved jobs overseas and reward companies that created jobs in the US. For the last four years, he has also offered tax credits for those companies that move jobs into the US and proposed eliminating tax breaks for moving expenses associated with offshoring. As Tankersley notes, “Congress ignored nearly all those proposals.” When the administration proposed cracking down on corporate inversions that were merely a way to avoid paying US taxes, House Republican whip Steve Scalise declared, “The president’s answer is to go punish the companies” and the proposal, like most Democratic proposals to help working Americans, died a death in the Republican Congress.

Today, of course, Republicans are applauding Trump’s deal with Carrier and even his bizarre threat to cancel two Boeing airplanes. Admittedly, there are a few lone voices of disapproval from the GOP and there is certainly a reluctance within the party to adopt the 35% tariff that Trump keeps promoting. As Tankersley points out, Republicans currently believe that Trump will suddenly “discover” that the tariff will hurt American workers, just like he “discovered” torture doesn’t work, and the GOP will just end up with the corporate tax rate reduced from 35% to 15%, which is what they really, really want. But, as Masha Gessen noted, the oligarchs thought they could control and contain Putin too.