The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has yesterday announced a new mandate that, effective the first of 2024, no multinational corporation may do business with the kingdom’s government unless physically relocating its HQ to Saudi Arabia. So that no governmental contractors will be permitted contracts unless filing taxes within the kingdom directly. Big, crazy news. Especially in light of the half-trillion-dollar smart city in development therein, and with Alphabet displaying uncanny foresightedness by announcing several years ago its plans for a new global HQ thereabouts, in a story since scrubbed from the bigger platforms as studiously as news clips featuring New York City residents in hospital beds describing multiple explosions experienced at the World Trade Center in the early morning of September 11th, 2001, just prior to the plane-crashed demolition by Saudi extremists.
Although one minor detail was omitted from the top 10 or so search engine results for articles addressing the mandate story, how the kingdom has, for the last 20 or 30 years, been the world’s largest buyer of arms. While virtually every major news platform discussing the story is pitching it as an affront to the United Arab Emirates, the costs of business for the UAE this will affect are dwarfed outrageously by the weapons trade of the Saud family of billionaires controlling and beheading the kingdom. And the largest seller of arms is the USA, with the 5 largest weapons manufacturers in the known world housed stateside. From 2015-2019, the kingdom’s imports increased 130 percent compared to the previous five-year period, with the USA generously providing 73% of Saudi Arabia’s imports. With the storied mandate taking effect, companies such as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon will need to redirect their taxable earnings from the USA, to the kingdom, disaffecting the largest source of the USA government’s national revenue from hundreds of billions of dollars yearly.
Which implies that the USA will be feeling this far more intrinsically than the UAE.
While corporate taxation does provide the government with billions annually, alongside millions in political campaign contributions it presents a fraction of what is legally owed, with the trillions more in taxes dodged, evaded and made to vanish by mega-corporations being solely responsible for what comprises America’s legendary national debt. Further in debt than any nation-state in world history, the liars, thieves and whores culpable are systematically rewarded with corporate grants and subsidies and tax breaks and tax forgiveness and tax write-offs galore, until Lady Liberty is bled dry. And if their meal ticket asserts its timely dominance elsewhere, then even the paltry token payments of corporate taxes actually paid will be lost by the American public. In these early years of a pandemic where easily half the domestic population is homeless and/or unemployed, outside of official government statistics which have always been less concerned with conveying any truth than with downplaying just how badly the self-interests of their captains of industry and heads of state have left them fucked.
But I am reminded of a previous mandate from the house of Saud, occurring in 2019 and concerning its designs for strengthening its digital sector, as reported by Alicia Buller. References as well omitted from news presentations of the current mandate, I cannot possibly be the only voice now to wonder how the one applies to the other, the most profitable companies in the most lucrative fields affording their symbolic tithes and outright bribes elsewhere.
“The kingdom also launched the Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC) in 2018, with funding worth $1.33bn. These endeavours follow the kingdom’s highly publicised billion-dollar investments in tech companies, such as Uber and Magic Leap, through its state-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF). According to Jyoti Lalchandani, group vice-president at IDC, Saudi Arabia must continue to invest heavily in its infrastructure and tech support programmes to both retain and entice talented human capital to the region. “Saudi Arabia’s leadership has made noises about becoming the Middle East’s Silicon Valley, but to do this they need to provide a lot of funding and access to opportunities to gain access to the right level of skills,” said Lalchandani. He added that the kingdom is rapidly trying to put in place a number of incentives to develop an ecosystem of tech startups. He notes that the kingdom is already “making strides in the right direction” by beefing up its national academic and research and development (R&D) support programmes. “To develop its tech skills pool, the kingdom will require a mix of local entrepreneurs and specialist skills from the outside – Saudi Arabia has traditionally relied on skills from outside,” said Lalchandani.”
Missed in the translation by all of the paid media professionals, is the declaration that the USA is finished.