Foreign Sales Corporation update at WTO

Lisa & Ian Murray seamus at accessone.com
Mon Sep 4 18:32:57 PDT 2000


[mbs] The export subsidies may not be great tax policy, but they

aim to (very) roughly compensate for what the EU does already

with its VAT: exempt exports from tax and fully tax imports.

So "needs to be destroyed" is a little strong, I would say.

The amount of revenue involved suggests the measure is

pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things.

Just why do Boeing etc. need yet another tax break? A few billion here and there and soon you're talking stuff that doesn't get funded because "we don't have the $$" [let alone the brains or guts] and the State undermining it's own legitimacy [not that it hasn't done that already mind you] via "equality before the law" and all that other sort of populist stuff. Besides, the symbolism of the thing will play in Peoria, raising even more voter anger at the corporate lapdogs in congress.

[mbs]Much more interesting is the political impasse that results

if the new law does not pass muster with the WTO. It's

hard to imagine the Congress knuckling under to the WTO,

all their free trade rhetoric notwithstanding. This is nearly

as great a threat to WTO as agitation from the left.

Doesn't "the left" have the opportunity to whack at two, nay three, boneheaded institutions for the price of one [the republicrats, congress, and corps.]? "The left" should be giddy at the contradictions in this one.

Ian



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