For the first time ever, G20 Leaders agree to establish a historic Global Minimum Corporate Tax
At the G20 Summit in Rome, President Biden coordinated with fellow Leaders on shared interests, including the climate crisis, global health and pandemic preparedness, and the global economic recovery, using the power of diplomacy to address key issues that matter to the American people. Together with the European Union, we achieved a major breakthrough arrangement to negotiate the world’s first carbon-based sectoral arrangement on steel and aluminum, protecting and creating American jobs and lowering costs for families while fighting the climate crisis.
Throughout the G20 President Biden stressed the need for balanced, well-supplied, and competitive global energy markets to underpin an inclusive economic recovery that supports working families at home and abroad. Leaders committed to guaranteeing just and orderly energy transitions of our energy systems that ensure affordability, including for the most vulnerable households and businesses as we recover from the global pandemic. They expressed their intent to explore among other things, paths to enhanced energy security and markets stability.
President Biden met with Leaders from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom to discuss the risks posed to international security by Iran’s escalating nuclear program, and hosted a supply chain summit with 14 countries and the European Union to discuss how we collectively tackle the immediate supply chain challenges from this unprecedented economic recovery and build long-term supply chain reliance for the future. President Biden also held bilateral meetings on the margins of the G20 with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore.
After the Summit, the G20 Leaders came to a consensus across a host of issues, including:
Historic Global Minimum Tax: G20 Leaders representing 80% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) endorsed the establishment of a historic Global Minimum Tax (GMT) to end the race to the bottom, ensure giant corporations pay their fair share no matter where they are located, help prevent the offshoring of good American jobs, and invest in our people at home. One recent independent study found that this agreement to establish a 15% GMT—up from 0% today—would lead to at least $60 billion in revenue per year in the United States alone. Today’s announcement is a testament to American diplomacy and leadership.
COVID-19 Pandemic and Health Security: The Leaders came together in support of the COVID-19 response and global vaccination targets. The Leaders also decide to take next steps toward the design and establishment of an inclusive, sustained, and adequate financing facility to improve global health security and bolster pandemic preparedness around the world. The Leaders agreed to establish a G20 Finance and Health Task Force to enhance global cooperation to detect and response to emerging health threats. The G20 Leaders also came out in support of a global ambition to channel $100 billion worth of reallocation of special drawing rights (SDRs) to help the world’s most vulnerable countries and restructuring debts for low-income countries on a case by case basis – a major step towards global economic recovery. The Leaders also supported efforts to shorten the cycle for the development of safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics from 300 to 100 days (following the identification of such threats) and work to make them equitably and widely available. This work follows calls for more urgent action and continued focus from the United States following the President’s Global COVID-19 Summit.
Climate Change: G20 Leaders came out in support of ending public finance for new unabated coal power generation abroad, to contribute to keeping a 1.5 degrees Celsius limit on global temperature rise with reach. They stressed the importance of fully meeting, as soon as possible, the developed country collective goal of mobilizing $100B per year to help developing countries in the face of climate change. After a four-year absence of U.S. federal leadership, President Biden’s commitment to climate finance, alongside strong new pledges from other donors, are fundamental to achieving this goal no later than 2023. This is a decisive decade for climate action and the President will continue to rally the world to tackle the climate crisis together.
Anticorruption and Ransomware: The Leaders also lifted up the global fight against corruption as a shared priority, which includes transparency for beneficial ownership and real estate, and they committed to fight any new and sophisticated forms of corruption. The Leaders recognized the need for international cooperation to counter ransomware and other forms of cybercrime. Just this month, the Biden Administrationheld a meeting with more than 30 countries to accelerate cooperation to counter ransomware, including to improve collective resilience, address the misuse of virtual currency to launder ransom payments, and investigate and prosecute cyber criminals. This work builds on U.S. international efforts to promote cybersecurity, including our commitment to work with G7 partners to address criminal ransomware networks, our support for updating NATO cyber policy for the first time in seven years, and our continuing efforts to work with allies and partners to attribute malicious cyber activity, as evidenced by the broad international support we garnered in our attributions for SolarWinds and Hafnium malicious cyber activity.
Leaders also committed to achieving food security and adequate nutrition, particularly in famine-stricken parts of the world where armed conflicts have exacerbated these problems—such as Ethiopia. Leaders will continue to enhance concrete measures to advance gender equality in national policies. President Biden issued the first-ever national gender strategy to advance the full participation of all people – including women and girls – in the United States and around the world.
