US Treasury Creates More Hurdles for Business Investment

US business investment—including research and development (R&D) outlays to create intellectual property—hasn't exactly sparkled in recent years (figure 1). Anemic investment is a key reason that US GDP lags 3.6 percent below what economists see as potential output, and the US economy is chugging along at under 2 percent average annual growth. Under these circumstances, the US Treasury ought to be exploring imaginative tax reforms that would spur business investment.1 Instead, the department is b

Source: Peterson Institute (PIIE)