Trump vs. Value Added Tax

I have 3 articles in Tax Notes International (TNI) on Donald Trump’s crusade against foreign Value Added Taxes (VATs) -- known in Canada, Australia and New Zealand as the Goods and Services Tax or GST. 

https://www.taxnotes.com/document-list/contributors-authors/sayeed-adil 

Trump’s false notion that VAT is an unfair trade barrier was fed to him by his team of trade advisers: 
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross 
• US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer 
• Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro, PhD 

Trump successfully nominated David Malpass to be World Bank President. Malpass made the same mistake about VAT in a New York Times article. (Scroll down to his 3rd last paragraph.)


The “VAT as trade barrier” error may not fade into history if Trump is defeated. Sadly, economic nationalist believers in the same error may wield influence in the Biden Administration and Democratic Congress. 

TNI articles are behind a subscriber paywall. If your institution’s library subscribes to Tax Notes, your librarian should be able to help you obtain the full text of my articles. As a bonus, I have a 2008 TNI article using the GST to poke fun at former Brian Mulroney’s business dealings after retiring as Canada’s Prime Minister with lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber. Not often you can laugh at sales tax.

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