He has an op-ed at the New York Post today that is a complete mess.
It has its valid points. Corporate woke-ism is a real thing. The nation's largest companies are indeed ate up with preoccupation with "equity," inclusiveness and the global climate.
Where his piece unravels is when he conflates concern about that with the kind of nostalgic yearning for the thriving factory towns of a bygone era that was a key component of Trumpism, trotting out the protectionist lines about "moving good jobs out of our nation," "prioritizing offshoring" and "with the profits came a corporate duty to care for the strength of the nation and its citizens." Where in the federal code is that found? Those were the whines of the populists well before the woke-ism element became such a problem.
I understand that US companies being so entwined with China is problematic and even has national security implications, but that's a specific situation that ought to be targeted for examination. The idea that it's, generally speaking, somehow "greedy" for corporations to offshore is something that has a more-than-faint leftist odor about it. Government - as in elected lawmakers such as Rubio - ought to be steering policy toward a free-market footing. Whether Republicans have ever been anywhere close to purists about that is debatable, but given that their party is ostensibly the repository for conservative principles on the national landscape, they should be.
Rubio frames the low-corporate-taxes stance Republicans have taken as part of a transaction:
Cutting corporate taxes, and especially investment taxes, makes sense if US companies are going to invest in American industry. But if they’re instead prioritizing offshoring operations or simply returning windfalls to shareholders, then policymakers are going to start being more careful in how we structure tax cuts.
Sorry, Senator, the reason for keeping corporate taxes low is the same as it is for any kind of taxes: the money belongs to the person or organization earning it, not the government.
He winds up his argument with this humdinger. There's no way around it; it sounds downright Mussolini-esque:
America’s laws should keep our nation’s corporations firmly ordered to our national common good.
Corporations, like mom-and-pop shops or any other form of organization that exists to show its owners a return on their investment, are not obligated to hew to anybody's concept of the "national common good." Who the hell gets to define that?
Yes, corporations ought to get out of the business of weighing in on transgender bathrooms, election laws and police shootings, but they ought to continue to set up their facilities and supply chains in the most cost-efficient manner possible, free of pressure from government to do otherwise.
Senator Rubio, when did you get this idea that tax law is a legitimate instrument of leverage?
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