Change and Stability in Global Tax Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Lukas Hakelberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Tax Policy ◽  
Market Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
Tax Havens ◽  
International Tax ◽  
International Tax Policy

This chapter takes a look at the ability of a great power like the United States to unilaterally effect fundamental change in international tax policy through coercion. It first shows that the structural constraints precluding a common interest in countermeasures to tax evasion were still in place when the US Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). Second, the chapter reveals that there was no need for normative change, because regulative norms have never consistently prevented the United States from interfering with the legal systems of tax havens. From there, the chapter considers when a great power like the United States can effect fundamental change in international tax policy and the domestic tax policies of less powerful countries through coercion. It argues that a government reaches great power status if it controls an internal market large enough to reduce its dependence on international trade and investment relative to the government's negotiating partners and uses its regulatory capacity to effectively restrict market access for foreign firms or investors.

scholarly journals A Positive Dialectic: Beps and The United States

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 114 ◽  
pp. 255-259
Author(s):  
Reuven S. Avi-Yonah
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
General View ◽  
Profit Shifting ◽  
Current State ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
International Tax ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
International Tax Policy ◽  
Jobs Act

This essay addresses the interaction between the changes in the international tax regime identified by Mason and U.S. international tax policy. Specifically, I will argue that contrary to the general view, the United States actively implemented the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)/G20 Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) recommendations through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). Moreover, the changes of the TCJA influenced the current OECD effort of BEPS 2.0. Thus, the current state of affairs can be characterized as a constructive dialogue: The OECD moves (BEPS 1), the United States responds (TCJA), the OECD moves again (BEPS 2). If the international tax regime is to survive, it is important that BEPS 2 will succeed, and that the US will then go along and amend the TCJA accordingly. From this kind of positive dialectic, a new international tax regime fit for the twenty-first century may emerge.

Power in International Tax Politics

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Lukas Hakelberg
Keyword(s):  
Tax Evasion ◽  
Tax Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Administrative Authority ◽  
The Us ◽  
Regulatory Capacity ◽  
International Tax

This chapter develops a theory of power in international tax politics. This theory identifies market size and regulatory capacity as the decisive resources enabling governments to issue credible threats and inducements with a view toward making other governments do what they would not otherwise do. A lack of regulatory capacity explains why the European Union has not wielded the same power in negotiations over global tax policy as the United States despite the EU's similarly sized internal market. In fact, taxation remains an exclusive member state competence. Therefore, the European Commission has no administrative authority to impose penalties on third states or foreign firms not complying with tax good governance standards applicable within the union. At the same time, the principle of nondiscrimination enshrined in EU law prevents individual EU countries from passing sanctions against other member states abetting tax evasion and avoidance. Because of the lack of regulatory centralization in the EU, the US can act as a hegemon in international tax politics. Accordingly, US preferences determined by domestic politics decisively shape the content of global tax policy. The preferences of other governments merely affect the US administration's enforcement strategy.

The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Murray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Rising Powers ◽  
Peaceful Rise ◽  
Rising Power ◽  
Struggle For Recognition ◽  
Power Transitions

How can established powers manage the peaceful rise of new great powers? With The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations, the author offers a new answer to this perennial question in international relations, arguing that power transitions are principally social phenomena whereby rising powers struggle to obtain recognition of their identity as a great power. At the center of great power identity formation is the acquisition of particular symbolic capabilities—such as battlesheips, aircraft carriers, or nuclear weapons—that are representative of great power status and that allow rising powers to experience their uncertain social status as a brute fact. When a rising power is recognized, this power acquisition is considered legitimate and its status in the international order secured, leading to a peaceful power transition. If a rising power is misrecognized, its assertive foreign policy is perceived to be for revisionist purposes, which must be contained by the established powers. Revisionism—rather than the product of a material power structure that encourages aggression or domestic political struggles—is a social construct that emerges through a rising power’s social interactions with the established powers as it attempts to gain recognition of its identity. The question of peaceful power transition has taken on increased salience in recent years with the emergence of China as an economic and military rival of the United States. Highlighting the social dynamics of power transitions, this book offers a powerful new framework through which to understand the rise of China and how the United States can facilitate its peaceful rise.

Where Great Powers Meet

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Shambaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Stable Region ◽  
Power Transition ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
The Cold War

After the end of the Cold War, it seemed as if Southeast Asia would remain a geopolitically stable region within the American imperious for the foreseeable future. In the last two decades, however, the re-emergence of China as a major great power has called into question the geopolitical future of the region and raised the specter of renewed great power competition. As this book shows, the United States and China are engaged in a broad-gauged and global competition for power. While this competition ranges across the entire world, it is centered in Asia, and here this text focuses on the ten countries that comprise Southeast Asia. The United States and China constantly vie for position and influence in this enormously significant region, and the outcome of this contest will do much to determine whether Asia leaves the American orbit after seven decades and falls into a new Chinese sphere of influence. Just as important, to the extent that there is a global “power transition” occurring from the United States to China, the fate of Southeast Asia will be a good indicator. Presently, both powers bring important assets to bear. The United States continues to possess a depth and breadth of security ties, soft power, and direct investment across the region that empirically outweigh China’s. For its part, China has more diplomatic influence, much greater trade, and geographic proximity. In assessing the likelihood of a regional power transition, the book looks at how ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the countries within it maneuver between the United States and China and the degree to which they align with one or the other power.

Extraterritorial Shrimps, NGOs and the WTO Appellate Body

1999 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asif H. Qureshi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Market Access ◽  
The United States ◽  
Consultation Process ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
Wto Dispute Settlement ◽  
The Us ◽  
Wto Appellate Body ◽  
Dispute Settlement System

At the centre of the international trading order, under the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), lies a dispute-settlement system. This system offers a graduated conflict-resolution mechanism that begins with a consultation process; progresses to adjudication, through a panel system, and ends in an appellate process.1 Under this machinery, in October 1996 India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand (the complainants) requested joint consultations with the United States, regarding the US prohibition on the importation of certain shrimps and shrimp products caught with fishing technology considered by the United States adversely to affect the population of sea turtles—an endangered species under CITES.2 The US prohibition arose from section 609 of Public Law 101–1623 and associated regulations and judicial rulings (hereafter referred to as section 609). In a nutshell the complainants claimed denial of market access to their exports, and the United States justified this on grounds of conservation. However, as a consequence of the failure of the consultations, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body established a panel, around April 1997, to consider a joint complaint against the United States in relation to section 609. Australia, Ecuador, the European Communities, HongKong, China, Mexico and Nigeria joined the complainants as third parties. In May 1998 the panel's report was published, containing a decision in favour of the complainants. In July 1998 the United States appealed to the WTO Appellate Body, and in October 1998 the Appellate Body issued its report.4

Germany's relations with the United States and China from a strategic triangle perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Biba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Power ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Puzzle Piece ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Angela Merkel

Abstract As the Sino-American Great Power competition continues to intensify, newly-elected US President Joe Biden's administration now seeks to enlist the support of its allies and partners around the world. As Europe's largest economy and a, if not the, leading voice within the European Union, Germany represents an important puzzle-piece for Biden. But Germany, at least under outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, has been reluctant to take sides. It is against this backdrop that this article looks into Germany's past and present trilateral relationships with the US and China through the theoretical lens of the so-called strategic triangle approach. Applying this approach, the article seeks to trace and explain German behaviour, as well as to elucidate the opportunities and pitfalls that have come with it. The article demonstrates that Germany's recently gained position as a ‘pivot’ (two positive bilateral relationships) between the US and Chinese ‘wings’ (positive bilateral relations with Germany and negative bilateral relations with each other) is desirable from the perspective of the strategic triangle. At the same time, being pivot is also challenging and hard to maintain. Alternative options, such as entering a US–German ‘marriage’ directed against China, are also problematic. The article therefore concludes that Germany has tough decisions to take going forward.

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