The American Interest published an article by my old friend Jim Henry over the weekend under the title 'The Apple Tax Giveaway'. It began:
On January 17, Apple issued a press release that reads like a White House infomercial for the Trump/Goldman tax heist that was rammed through Congress three days before Christmas 2017. It contains a flurry of “stylized facts” about all the wonderful things that Apple, armed with the tax cuts, plans to do for the U.S. economy over the next five years. These include a purported $350 billion increase in Apple's purchases from U.S. suppliers; $30 billion of new U.S. capital investment; 20,000 new U.S. jobs; a second U.S.-based “campus”; and the expansion of something called an “Advanced Manufacturing Fund” from $1 billion to $5 billion.
What Jim then does, somewhat forensically, is take the claims apart. What he shows is that all of these things are predictable based on Apple's past behaviour. In essence, it looks like the tax reform will actually change nothing except to give Apple an increase in its readily available cash pile as opposed to its locked away offshore cash pile.
It's worth a read if only to ask the question 'Really Apple; have you truly got the nerve to claim that?'
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This will be the apple that Eve took the bite from?
An industry now so large it is expecting to be disrupted. Look forward ‘Pandora Inc.’ new stores coming to your High Street soon. 🙂
I watched Donald Trump using this information in a speech covered by CNN (I think). I can see how this and the tax cuts for middle income earners might appear very attractive, especially in the way Trump presents these “improvements” in their lives.
This sort of thing appears to be par for the course. I saw a report on US PBS news recently that was full pro-Trump spokesmen claiming the credit for economic ‘good news’ that they couldn’t possibly claim with any honesty because the good news mostly took the form of medium to long-term outcomes and Trump has only been in office for one year.
They were quite obviously claiming the credit for Obama initiatives as some in the report had the good sense to point out.
The usual suspects will seek vindication wherever they can pretend to find it. Its something that we need to keep an eye on. Full credit to Jim Henry.
By the same token, Marco, if the expected financial crash happens on Trump’s watch he’ll get the blame for that, despite the roots of it going back to the failure to deal with the problems exposed in 2008.
In his position I think I’d be tempted to claim credit for the daily sunrise.