President Donald Trump likes to say he’s bringing in trillions of dollars in investments from foreign countries, but a provision in his tax cuts bill could cause international companies to avoid expanding into the United States.

The House-passed version of the legislation would allow the federal government to impose taxes on foreign-parented companies and investors from countries judged as charging “unfair foreign taxes” on U.S. companies.

Known as Section 899, the measure could cause companies to avoid investing in the the U.S. out of concern they could face steep taxes. The fate of the measure rests with the Senate — setting off a debate about its prospects and impact.

A new analysis by the Global Business Alliance, a trade group representing international companies such as Toyota and Nestlé, estimates that the provision would cost the U.S. 360,000 jobs and $55 billion annually over 10 years in lost gross domestic product. The analysis estimates that the tax could cut a third off the economic growth anticipated from the overall tax cuts by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.

“While proponents say this punitive tax hike is intended as a retaliatory measure against foreign governments, this report confirms that the real victims are American workers in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee and Texas,” said Jonathan Samford, president and CEO of the Global Business Alliance.

Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has defended the provision as protecting U.S. interests by giving the president a tool that can be used against countries with tax codes that, in the federal government’s opinion, put American companies at a disadvantage.

“If these countries withdraw these taxes and decide to behave, we will have achieved our goal,” Smith said in a statement last week. “It’s just common sense. I urge my colleagues in the Senate to move quickly to pass this bill and protect Americans from economic bad actors around the world.”

House Republicans have been looking into the issue for a long time and the bill provides the flexibility so that a president doesn’t have to levy taxes. There were concerns among GOP lawmakers during Joe Biden’s presidency that an agreement among countries on corporate tax codes could cause foreign governments to charge U.S. companies more.

The tax gets at a fundamental tension within Trump’s policy agenda: a contradiction in the broad strokes of Trump simultaneously trying to tax imports and foreign profits at higher rates while also seeking investments from companies headquartered abroad.

In late May, Trump defended his approach by saying that his tariffs were causing more countries to invest in the U.S. to avoid imports getting taxed. While some countries and companies have made announcements, there is not evidence of the investments pushing up spending on new factories as measured in the government’s monthly report on construction spending.

The Republican president said his tendency to impose steep tariffs, then retreat to lower rates, had succeeded.

“We have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing,” Trump said then. “You know we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said, you got the hottest — we have the hottest country in the world right now.”

The Global Business Alliance was among the groups that signed a letter on Monday warning of the consequences of Section 899 to Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo of Idaho, both Republicans.

The Investment Company Institute, representing financial firms, said the provision “could limit foreign investment to the U.S. — a key driver of growth in American capital markets that ultimately benefits American families saving for their futures.”

The analysis performed by EY Quantitative Economics and Statistics notes there is a degree of uncertainty in how the taxes under Section 899 could be implemented and other countries would respond. But they could be charged against companies based in countries that tax digital services, as is the case in parts of Europe.

If the U.S. judged the taxes unfair, there would be a 30% tax rate on foreign companies’ profits and income. People working in the U.S. for the companies who are not citizens could also be taxed, among other provisions. Still, an exemption is in place so that the foreign holders of U.S. debt are not affected by the potential new taxes.

The possibility of the taxes and seemingly arbitrary nature by which they could be imposed is also a challenge, said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of New York University’s Tax Law Center.

“Section 899 creates a game of political chicken with trade partners that risks harming businesses, consumers, and workers in the hopes of securing US multinationals the ability to shift more of their profits out of the US to tax havens,” Huang said in an email. “It’s a high-risk strategy that could expand the damage of the failed tariff war.”

There could also be political repercussions if key states in Trump’s political coalition from 2024 suffer layoffs or simply find job growth slowing. The Global Business Alliance finds job losses could amount to 44,200 in Florida, 27,700 in Pennsylvania, 24,500 in North Carolina and 23,500 in Michigan.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Amazon cut jobs in its Books business, according to an internal email.
• The company started by selling books online in the 1990s.
• This remains a large business for the e-commerce giant.

Amazon is cutting jobs in its Books business, according to an internal email viewed by Business Insider on Thursday.

"Today, we are taking the very difficult step of eliminating some roles on your team," a senior Amazon manager wrote in the email. "Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated. This decision was not made lightly, and Books leadership and the HR team are here to support you through this transition."

The email stated employees will receive full pay and benefits for the next 60 days, or 90 days for employees in New York or New Jersey, plus additional severance.

"As part of our ongoing work to make our teams and programs operate more efficiently, and to better align with our business roadmap, we've made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles within the Books organization," an Amazon spokesperson said. "We don't make these decisions lightly, and we're committed to supporting affected employees through their transitions."

The cuts affected fewer than 100 employees. The tech giant isn't reducing the size of its Books business because the roles will be repurposed for other parts of the company, according to Amazon.

Amazon got started by selling books online in the 1990s. While the company closed its physical stores in 2022, the online business remained big. Amazon sold $16.9 billion worth of books in the first 10 months of 2022, BI previously reported.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected] or Signal at +1-425-344-8242. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

It's long been the stuff of science fiction: humans achieving immortality by uploading their consciousness into a silicon virtual paradise, ruled over by a benevolent super-intelligent AI. Or maybe one dreams of leaving a dying Earth to colonize Mars or other distant planets. It's a tantalizing visionary future that has been embraced by tech billionaires in particular. But is that future truly the utopian ideal, or something potentially darker? And are those goals even scientifically feasible?

These are the kinds of questions astrophysicist and science journalist Adam Becker poses in his new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. Becker's widely praised first book, What Is Real?, focused on competing interpretations of quantum mechanics and questioned the long dominance of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation championed by Niels Bohr, among other luminaries. This time around, he's tackling Silicon Valley's far-reaching ideas about the future, which have moved out of online subcultures and into mainstream culture, including our political discourse.

"It seemed like it was only going to become more relevant and someone needed to speak out about it, and I didn't see enough people connecting the dots in a way that looked right to me," Becker told Ars. "One current critique of Silicon Valley is that they moved fast and broke democracy and institutional norms. That's true. Another is that they're contemptuous of government, and I think that's true, too. But there wasn't much critique of their visions of the future, maybe because not enough people realized they meant it. Even among Silicon Valley critics, there was this idea that at the very least, you could trust that the statements they made about science and technology were true because they were experts in science and technology. That's not the case."

Read full article

Comments

It only took five years, but Netflix has finally locked in its plan to premiere The Old Guard’s long awaited sequel.

Today, Netflix announced that director Victoria Mahoney’s (You, Lovecraft Country) The Old Guard 2 is slated to debut on July 2nd. Rather than dropping a trailer, Netflix released a handful of new stills from the film, and teased some of its plot details. Set some time after the first movie, The Old Guard 2 continues the story of previously-immortal warrior Andy (Charlize Theron) and her team of expert soldiers who have all been blessed / cursed with never ending lives. 

With Quynh (Veronica Ngô), another immortal, now free from her underwater prison and on the hunt for revenge, Andy and her teammates Nile (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli) have no choice but to fight one of their own. Because they can both die, the situation’s particularly dangerous for Andy and ex CIA operative James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor). But with Tuah (Henry Golding) potentially being on the verge of discovering how the groups’ healing powers work, Andy might not be spending all that much time as a regular woman.

In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum blog, Theron teased that, in addition to bringing Uma Thurman into the fold, the sequel will feature a little something for anyone who was a fan of the first film or the original graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández.

“Andy and her warriors are back with a renewed sense of purpose,” Theron said. “The stakes are even higher now that Andy is mortal and can die — but that certainly won’t keep her out of the action.”

There’s a famous two-decade-old Paris Review interview with Haruki Murakami in which he, one of the world’s most celebrated novelists, details his daily routine. He wakes up at 4AM, works for five hours, goes for a run, reads, goes to bed, and then repeats it all over again. The rigor and repetition are the point.

I am not Haruki Murakami.

In addition to my work at The Verge, I write novels — my second one is out this week — and while I admire Murakami’s commitment to an immovable schedule, I’ve found that I produce my best work when I’m constantly rethinking routines, processes, and, mostly, how I’m writing. In the modern age, that means what software I’m using.

What I am about to describe will be a nightmare to anyone who likes all of their tools to work harmoniously. All of these apps are disconnected and do not interoperate with each other in any way. Many of the things they do are redundant and overlap. I suppose this process is quite the opposite of frictionless — but that’s precisely the point. I’m not sure I believe that ambitious creative work is borne from a perfectly efficient workflow.

This is, instead, a journey of moving the work through d …

Read the full story at The Verge.