First-ever binding end to a border war: Missouri-Kansas UPDATED (Dan here late….August 2 post) Kansas Governor Laura Kelly has just signed an executive order that prohibits state subsidies being used to move existing Missouri firms in four Missouri counties to three Kansas counties, which together make up the Kansas City metropolitan area. Unlike previous voluntary no-raiding […]
New article in Shelterforce highlights EU state aid rules Greg LeRoy and I have written an article at Shelterforce explaining the basics of the European Union’s rules governing subsidies, or “state aid” in EU-speak. As the article is ungated, and regular readers will remember much of the detail, I will not quote it here. Suffice it to […]
Amazon defeated in New York UPDATED In the biggest ever defeat for a subsidized project in history, Amazon announcedFebruary 14th that it was canceling its planned half of HQ2 for New York City, which was to receive subsidies worth at least $3.133 billion. After facing months of public opposition, the company provided a Valentine’s Day present in […]
Amazon defeated in New York; more to come In the biggest ever defeat for a subsidized project in history, Amazon announcedyesterday that it was canceling its planned half of HQ2 for New York City, which was to receive subsidies worth at least $3.133 billion. After facing months of public opposition, the company provided a Valentine’s Day present […]
Electrolux closing Memphis plant; Economic development malpractice leaves Tennesse holding the bag On January 31, Electrolux announced (h/t Alan Freeman, ipolitics.ca) that it would be closing its new (2012) factory in Memphis, Tennessee, by the end of 2020. This facility, you may recall, was a subsidized relocation from L’Assomption, Quebec (a Montreal suburb) that had an aid intensity […]
UPDATE: Foxconn now says that it will indeed still build a factory, citing a conversation between CEO Terry Gou and Trump (h/t commenter Joel at Angry Bear). This is certainly clear as mud. As others have pointed out, several promised investments from Foxconn have failed to materialize at anywhere near the scale promised, including in Brazil, Pennsylvania, Indonesia, Vietnam, […]
Foxconn is flailing in Wisconsin (Insert your joke here.) In what may end up as the biggest economic development failure in U.S. history, Foxconn announced Wednesday that its $10 billion Wisconsin factory will not be a factory. Instead, the company says, it will still create 13,000 jobs, but these will be research jobs rather than manufacturing ones. […]
New article on tax increment financing in Missouri shows impact of KS/MO border war After several years of work, my colleague Susan G. Mason (Boise State University) and I have published a new article on TIF in Missouri, specifically in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas. “Exploring Patterns of Tax Increment Financing Use […]
Shock EU Court Decision Strikes Blow Against Investment Arbitration With all the dreary news we’ve seen this week, could you stand some good news? The battle against investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) got a huge boost in March when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in Slovak Republic v. Achmea B.V. (“Achmea”) that ISDS is contrary […]
Great new Tax Justice Network podcast on how “Bean Counters…Broke Capitalism” The June 28 Taxcast is out with a focus on the Big Four accounting firms. Richard Brooks is the author of Bean Counters: The triumph of the accountants and how they broke capitalism (order here in the UK and here in the US) which documents accountants’ involvement in some of […]