Washington, D.C. — Three years ago this month, President Donald Trump promised to enact “pro-American tax reform,” but a new analysis from the Center for American Progress finds that foreign investors were some of the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump administration’s signature tax reform bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
The TCJA disproportionately benefits corporations and their wealthy shareholders. Because 35 percent of U.S. corporate stock is owned by foreigners, the TCJA gives a huge break to foreign investors, including wealthy foreign individuals and the sovereign wealth funds of countries such as Norway, China, and Saudi Arabia, along with foreign multinational corporations that own U.S. subsidiaries. In all, foreign investors received $134 billion in tax cuts in the three years since the TCJA went into effect. This is more than the bottom 60 percent of American tax filers—constituting about 95 million households—have gotten in total from the Trump tax law. It is also more than the bottom 80 percent of tax filers in the 30 states that President Trump carried in 2016 received—about 72 million households—combined.
“The TCJA has been a boon for foreign investors and a missed opportunity to invest in America,” said Seth Hanlon, author of the analysis and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “TCJA’s proponents argued that corporate tax cuts ultimately trickle down to American workers, but we have yet to see that happen. Between the tax cuts for foreign investors—and other provisions of the law that did favors for foreign lobbyists and provided incentives for American companies to locate factories overseas—the TCJA can only be described as ‘America Last’ tax policy.”
Read: “Foreign Investors Were Big Winners From Trump’s Tax Law” by Seth Hanlon
For more information or to speak to an expert, contact Julia Cusick at [email protected].