“Factories will be pouring into this country,” Trump told a crowd in St. Charles, Mo., in November. “The tax cut will mean more companies moving to America, staying in America and hiring American workers right here.”
The bill that Trump signed, however, could actually make it attractive for companies to put more assembly lines on foreign soil.
Under the new law, income made by American companies’ overseas subsidiaries will face United States taxes that are half the rate applied to their domestic income, 10.5 percent compared with the new top corporate rate of 21 percent.
“It’s sort of an America-last tax policy,” said Kimberly Clausing, an economist at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who studies tax policy. “We are basically saying that if you earn in the U.S., you pay X, and if you earn abroad, you pay X divided by two.”
