This is in response to the letter from Jim Streby of Snohomish, published Jan. 8. He asked us to buy American whenever possible. A nice idea that was supposed to be made possible when the Republican Congress passed Trump’s 2017 tax cut bill lowering corporate tax liability from 35 percent to 21 percent. According to an analysis by journalists Jeff Stein and Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post, after allowable deductions, corporations actually paid taxes at a rate of 11.3 percent in 2018. And at least 91 corporations in the Fortune 500 (with billions of dollars in income) paid no federal taxes at all. (Washington Post, “Corporations paid 11.3 percent tax rate last year, in steep drop under Trump’s law,” Dec. 16, 2019.)
This dramatic and huge tax cut came with the promise from Trump that American corporations would immediately start bringing their manufacturing plants back to the U.S. from China. Yes! Buy American! To date, not one single manufacturing plant has been moved back to this country.
The real outcome of this tax cut has been a sky-rocketing national debt and that was before before the increased debt related to the pandemic. Just like the four-year promise “in two weeks” that Trump would offer his “perfect” replacement for the Affordable Care Act, and the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall (what little was built was done with money mostly stolen from military programs), this disastrous tax cut is just another Trump/Republican party move that, in the end, could very likely contribute to the destruction our country.
Michele Heiderer
Arlington
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