Starbucks Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said Tuesday that President Trump’s corporate tax cuts will saddle future generations with an insurmountable national debt.
“That 21 percent tax cut is going to add over $1 trillion to an already $21 trillion debt, and I think we are not paying much attention to that while we are robbing from the future of young people in America, who ultimately are going to have to pay for a $21 trillion tax deficit,” Mr. Schultz told Maria Bartiromo on “Mornings with Maria.”
“Now I think the question we should be asking ourselves is, ’What kind of country do we want to really live in?’ Do we want to live in a country where the U.S. is sitting with $21 trillion in debt? I don’t think so,” he said.
The Republican tax plan lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent as of Jan. 1, and dozens of major companies responded by passing the benefits onto their employees. Starbucks similarly announced that it would increase pay for its full- and part-time employees and start offering paid sick and parental leave for all employees.
Mr. Schultz, who stepped down as chief executive in April, said the company received about a $500 million boost from the new law.
“I personally did not believe that America needed a 21 percent corporate tax cut,” he said. “But as a result of that, we gave a significant part of our tax benefit back to our people on top of what we had already done over the last couple of years.
“I think we’re one of the few companies in America that recognize that in order to really benefit from the tax cut, we had to share our success with our people,” he added.
Mr. Schultz said the law will indeed help the economy but argued it could have done more to help “Americans who are being left behind.”
“I think this could have been tied to infrastructure, this could have been tied to education and learning,” he said. “There are a number of opportunities that I think we’ll look back on and say we missed an opportunity to do a lot more for the American people.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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