The first hours of the second term of Donald Trump They have not disappointed their followers and have frightened the rest. The president has ordered to remove the United States from the World Health Organization, end the participation of the leading power in the Paris Agreements against climate change and ignore the agreement within the OECD that requires a minimum tax of 15% to multinational companies.
The movements have provoked a reaction from organizations. The WHO has asked Trump to reconsider his departure. The European Union has warned that it will continue fighting global warming without the United States. The question in the air is whether international institutions will endure the four years of the Trump era or their degradation will be irreversible.
“Are these institutions going to die? Not immediately. The movements are relevant among other things because the United States is usually the largest financier of these organizations, but they can function without them,” he says. Angel Saz-Carranzadirector of EsadeGeo. “But what I believe is dead in general is the international system created after the Second World War, with a governance model that favored the United States but gave the rest a space of certainty to resolve dispute mechanisms. Now, the person who devised this system, the United States, has taken a hammer and is smashing it. What some call the liberal international order is dead. Some parts continue to function, but not those that deal with the most relevant issues: the Security Council for wars, OMC for commerce or Paris Agreements for Climate Change”.
This process of the United States leaving the international order did not strictly begin with the inauguration of Donald Trump this Monday; it has simply accelerated with its arrival. Joe Biden He respected his allies and brought his country back into the Paris Agreement after Trump pulled it out. Although the Democrat has also put nails in the coffin of international standards. It undermined the power of the World Trade Organization as guarantor of trade rules. He supported Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the 15-month war in Gaza, even though the offensive violated international humanitarian law, according to the United Nations and most NGOs on the ground. It allowed Israel to mercilessly attack the UN and its secretary general, António Guterres, or agencies such as UNRWA. The Biden Administration also discredited the international courts in The Hague when they ordered Netanyahu’s arrest for alleged war crimes.
Towards a new tax system?
Trump has ordered the cancellation of any country’s commitment to the 2021 Global Tax Agreement, which established a minimum tax of 15% globally for companies with a turnover greater than 750 million euros. The treaty, promoted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, was in force in 104 countries, including those of the European Union and United Kingdom. The United States Congress had not ratified it. It was done to prevent global companies from paying little or no taxes using complex tax schemes. Trump says he wants to break with everything that limits companies in his country. The technology companies that supported him during his inauguration, such as Amazon, Google or Meta, use these schemes efficiently to avoid being taxed. The Global Tax Agreement “limits our nation’s ability to enact tax policies that serve the interests of American businesses and workers,” according to Trump.
“It is difficult to know what is going to happen now, but it is not very realistic for the European Union to continue applying it to its multinationals, which are also smaller than those of the United States and have less muscle,” he says. Violeta Ruiz Almendralprofessor of Tax Law at the Carlos III University of Madrid.
The expert does not rule out that this is the first change of a new tax system, promoted from the United States. Trump has already charged, for example, against the income tax to natural persons is different from that which applies to companies. Everything can be modified. Ruiz Almendral gives as an example the revolution that VAT brought about, which was an idea of a French tax inspector in the 1950s and which has ended up becoming one of the bases of the welfare state in Europe, being the second tax by collection. .
Blow to the global health system
Trump has also ordered the United States to leave the World Health Organization. It is a hard financial blow for the WHO: the country contributes 1,284 million dollarswhich represents 18% of your total budget. It will be able to survive without that money, thanks to other donors such as Germany (856 million) or non-state actors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (830 million dollars) and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance (481 million dollars).
The Republican had already pointed to leaving the WHO during his first term. The organization was key in managing the covid crisis, which he first ignored and then managed reprehensibly. 1.2 million Americans died due to the covid pandemic.
The decision comes at a bad time for public health in the United States, which last year was the country in the world with the most recorded cases of avian flu. The H5N1 virus that causes it is one of the pathogens that experts see as the best candidate to star in future epidemics if it manages to mutate to be able to be transmitted between humans, reports EFE.
The WHO has already asked Donald Trump to reconsider his decision, which is actually a warning and will take effect within a year.
Exit from the Paris Agreements
Trump has also signed an executive order to remove the country from the Paris Agreement on emissions control, as he did in 2016. This pact, signed in 2015 in the French capital and of which the United Nations is the depositary, aims to limit the increase in the temperature during this century at +1.5 or +2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.
The United States, the second largest polluter after China, will immediately revoke any financial commitment assumed under the Paris Agreement. Also immediately terminate participation in the International Climate Finance Plan. Meanwhile, Trump promises that he will extract more fossil fuels from the ground than ever, he will remove restrictions on coal and gas extraction and that he will eliminate incentives for electric cars.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, He assured that Europe “will stay the course” and continue working “with nations that want to protect nature and stop global warming.” But the EU alone cannot stop global warming. The 1.5ºC objective was already missed last year and, without the United States, it is likely to get worse.
