Donald Trump: Don’t Blame Pfizer for Corporate Inversion Problem
The Republican front-runner says high corporate tax rates are the real villain.
Donald Trump isn’t blaming Pfizer Inc. for the problem of corporate inversions.
The Republican front-runner said Pfizer’s planned merger with Allergan Plc was understandable since it would allow the company to relocate its headquarters to Ireland, where taxes are much lower.
“What’s happening is companies are leaving our country and you’re reading about it,” Trump said in a Monday interview with Bloomberg Politics’ “With All Due Respect.” “You’re seeing Pfizer. They are leaving our country and thinking about massive numbers of companies are thinking about leaving to go out and get that money. Also to get a better tax deal.”
Asked whether there was anything wrong with taking advantage of corporate inversions, Trump was steadfast in pointing the finger at U.S. tax policy.
“No. There is no way you can stop it really other than lowering the taxes because right now […] it is prohibitive to bring that money in,” Trump said. “They’d have to pay so much, they’d have to be fools to bring it in.”
Pitching himself as the candidate who best understands economic issues, Trump also took a swipe at the rest of the 2016 presidential field. “Other candidates don’t even know what corporate inversion is,” he said. “I do know, I really know, you are going to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs to other countries because of corporate inversions. What you are going to do is lower the taxes bring the money in and they are going to use that money to build and do things in the United States.”
Trump has proposed slashing the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent as a way to lure businesses back to the U.S.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has been much more critical of individual companies like Pfizer.
“Hillary Clinton believes that our entire economy benefits when companies invest for the long term, not when they undercut competition by consolidating markets or juice profits by gaming the tax code,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, said in an e-mail.
If it goes forward, the Pfizer deal with Allergan would likely be the largest in the history of the pharmaceutical industry.
