Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, has an odd presidential campaign strategy: She wants voters to know that her top priority is to break the U.S. economy.
Okay, she doesn’t put it exactly like that.
But that would be the consequence of Warren’s policies toward America’s most successful corporations. Enter her announcement on Tuesday of a plan to impose a 7% tax surcharge on corporate profits over $100 million. Warren says this will ensure that big companies such as Amazon pay a fair amount of taxes.
It might sound good, but Warren’s plan would actually make the U.S. corporate tax rate one of the most expensive and thus most unattractive in the world. After all, the former Harvard Law School professor also opposes the 2017 tax reform’s corporate rate cut from 35% to 21%. Aside with her surcharge tax, a Warren presidency would mean major companies paying a marginal tax rate of over 40%.
Is this a good idea?
Well, no, considering nearly every major economy is reducing corporate tax rates to attract foreign investment and facilitate capital formation, I would suggest that Warren’s plan is not a very good idea, to put it gently. Moreover, the evidence in favor of lower corporate tax rates is clear. President Trump’s corporate tax cut has worked wonders for the economy, especially for minorities and the least skilled of workers.
The issue here isn’t simply that Warren should have walked across Harvard’s campus and sat in on a few business classes. It’s that Warren genuinely embraces the economic theory of self-destruction. It’s not just that Warren utterly ignores the facts on companies such as Amazon, it’s that she actually wants to destroy them. Warren recently outlined a plan to break up big technology companies such as Amazon and Facebook. She claims that this would foster innovation and competition. But it would only weaken the most innovative elements of the economy and drive them overseas.
All this leads to one inevitable conclusion: Basically, no major foreign investor would look at Warren and think, “She makes me want to invest in America.”
Unless, that is, they are insane.
Regardless, it is fortunate for America and the world that Warren is unlikely to ever become president. She’s not just a poor campaigner, she’s an especially bad fit to challenge Trump in 2020. No wonder the president is so eager for her to win the nomination.
