- Biden Prepares to Expand Trump’s Blacklist
- EU Obliges Giant Companies to Disclose the Tax They Pay
- The Number of Tourists in the World Decreased by 83%,
Biden Prepares to Expand Trump’s Blacklist
US President Joe Biden is preparing to broaden the bans imposed by his predecessor Donald Trump on American companies linked to the Chinese military this week.
At Biden’s request, the U.S. Treasury will prepare a list of companies that may be subject to financial sanctions for their involvement with China’s defense and surveillance technology sectors, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
During the Trump era, the targets of sanctions were companies owned or controlled by or associated with the Chinese military. With the decision that Biden is expected to sign by the end of this week, responsibility for those decisions will pass from the Department of Defense to the Department of the Treasury.
In a letter this week to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a bipartisan group of lawmakers — including Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly and Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican — demanded the publication of a new list of Chinese military-affiliated entities.
“The U.S. government must continue to act boldly in blocking the Chinese Communist Party’s economic predation against our industrial base,” they said in the letter. “We must not allow China to erode America’s military primacy.”
On the other hand, the debate about the origin of the coronavirus pandemic continues to take place in the US-China relations, as well as trade. Biden brought up the theory that Covid-19 may have been produced in the laboratory last week, giving intelligence agencies 90 days to detect the origin of the virus.
EU Obliges Giant Companies to Disclose the Tax They Pay
The European Union (EU) has agreed on a regulation that will make it mandatory for multinational companies with total annual revenues over 750 million Euros to disclose the amount of taxes they pay.
The European Council announced that an agreement was reached between the member states and the representatives of the European Parliament (EP) on the regulation called “Public reporting on a country basis”, which was prepared to increase tax transparency.
According to the agreement, all companies and their subsidiaries with consolidated revenues of more than 750 million Euros in the last 2 financial years will be required to publicly disclose tax information they have paid in EU countries, even if they are not based in the EU. Companies will also have to disclose the taxes they pay in countries on the blacklist, which includes third countries that do not cooperate with the EU in the tax field, or in the gray list, which includes countries that have committed to harmonizing their tax regulations with EU rules.
In addition to the tax amount, the report will also include information such as the profit or loss status and the number of people employed in each country.
According to EU data, companies’ tax avoidance practices cause a loss of 50 to 70 billion Euros annually to Europe.
While the new regulation aims to prevent this loss, European MP Evelyn Regner, who is leading the negotiations on the side of the European Parliament, said “I believe this agreement will be the beginning of a new era for tax justice and financial transparency in Europe.”
The official approval of the European Council and the European Parliament is required for the agreed regulation to become law. After approval, member states will transfer the regulation to their national legislation within 18 months.
The Number of Tourists in the World Decreased by 83%
With the pandemic in the world, the number of tourists has decreased this year. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) announced that in the first quarter of 2021, the number of tourists in the world decreased by 83% compared to last year.
UNWTO reported that in tourism, one of the sectors most affected by the Covid-19 epidemic, 183 million fewer tourists traveled in January-March 2021 compared to the same period of the previous year, which corresponds to an 83% decrease.
It was noted that the highest decrease was in the Asia-Pacific (91%) region, followed by Europe (83%), Africa (81%), the Middle East (78%) and America (71%). Reminding that 2020 is known as the worst year in tourism due to the epidemic, the World Tourism Organization emphasized that confidence in the sector is slowly returning.
It was stated that the experts in the sector updated their expectations in a slightly positive way in the May-August period, and the vaccination process created new hopes in the market.
UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said: “There is a significant increase in demands and we are seeing confidence slowly being restored. Vaccines will be the key to recovery in the industry, but if we want to see a recovery in the northern hemisphere, we need to make testing easier and more affordable and improve communication and coordination.”
On the other hand, in the survey published by the organization, it was seen that about half of the experts did not expect the 2019 data before the epidemic in tourism to be reached before 2024.
