Hassett Focuses on Foreign Tax Burden in Comments on Reciprocal Trade at WH
Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser who returned for President Donald Trump's second term, told reporters at the White House on Feb. 21 that he and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had just met with top Mexican officials about fentanyl and about reciprocal trade.
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"And so, reciprocal trade is about our government treating other governments the way they treat us. We want trade to be fair. It turns out that Americans have been disadvantaged by foreign governments over and over, and President Trump wants it to stop," he said, according to a WH transcript. The example Hassett gave didn't directly touch on tariffs or non-tariff barriers to exports, but rather corporate income taxes.
He said that last year, "U.S. companies paid $370 billion in taxes to foreign governments -- $370 billion. Last year, foreign multinationals paid us $57 billion in taxes.
"We have one quarter of world GDP. They have three quarters of world GDP. And we're paying $370 [billion]. They're paying $57 [billion]. This is not reciprocal. We're going to try -- or we're going to fix it."
Hassett also argued that higher tariff revenues that will be collected from ending de minimis for Chinese goods and for applying 10% tariffs to all Chinese imports "is actually going to make it much easier for Republicans to pass a [tax extension] bill, and that was the president’s plan all along."
He said those revenues are forecasted to be somewhere between $50 billion and $100 billion annually.