Former US president Donald Trump has accused his successor Joe Biden of a "massive giveaway" to China with his plan to hike corporate tax by seven points.
In a statement posted on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, Trump said Biden's proposal to raise the rate from 21 to 28 per cent to pay for a $2 trillion in infrastructure projects would "send thousands of factories, millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars" overseas.
"The Biden plan will crush American workers and decimate U.S. manufacturing, while giving special tax privileges to outsourcers, foreign and giant multinational corporations," Trump said. "Sacrificing good paying American jobs is the last thing our citizens need as our country recovers from the effects of the Global Pandemic."
Trump slashed the US rate from 35 per cent to 21 after taking office in 2017 — and later credited that and his policy of punitive tariffs on Chinese imports with a fall in unemployment.
The tax plan would "break the back of the American Worker with among the highest business tax rates in the developed world", said the former president, and lead to "more Americans out of work, more families shattered, more factories abandoned, more industries wrecked, and more Main Streets boarded up and closed down — just like it was before I took over the presidency four years ago."
China's current rate of corporation tax is 25 per cent, with a lower 20 per cent rate for less profitable businesses. British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announce a rise in his March budget, from the current 19 per cent rate to 25 per cent in 2023 — but only on annual profits over £250,000.
Trump insisted that "Companies that send American jobs to China should not be rewarded by Joe Biden’s Tax Bill, they should be punished so that they keep those jobs right here in America, where they belong."
Earlier sources told media that Biden had rejected Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposal for a "wealth tax" to pay for Biden's 'Build Back Better' initiative.
"This tax hike is a classic globalist betrayal by Joe Biden and his friends," Trump charged. "the lobbyists will win, the special interests will win, China will win, the Washington politicians and government bureaucrats will win—but hardworking American families will lose."
