Although he would not specifically praise President Trump’s lowering the corporate tax rate, France’s finance minister nonetheless told Newsmax that his country supports the idea of lowering the corporate tax as well as other taxes.
Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who spoke to me during the recent World Bank/International Monetary Fund Spring meeting in Washington, D.C., said that the reduction of lower corporate taxes “was an American decision by an American president.”
He emphasized that he would not comment on a “sovereign decision” by another country.
But France, Le Maire quickly added, “did the same thing by reducing the level of our corporate tax. We will have lowered it from 33.3 percent to 25 percent by the end of 2022.”
“We are also of the view we need to lower other taxes,” said Le Maire.
His praise for lower taxes was surprising. France had successive tax increases for five years (2012 to 2017) under President Francois Hollande. France now has a higher tax burden than any country in the eurozone except for Belgium. The overall tax burden in France is 46.5 percent, 6 percent higher than Germany and 8 percent higher than the United Kingdom.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.