Grantmakers oppose Trump’s plan to revoke foundations’ tax-exempt policy
Top Trump administration officials said they reached a trade agreement with China after two days of negotiations in Geneva, marking a potentially massive victory for President Donald Trump amid his trade war with Beijing.
Some of America’s wealthiest and most powerful private foundations are informally banding together to protect their tax-exempt status from any potential attempt to revoke it by the Trump administration.
The White House announced a “China trade deal” in a May 11 statement, but did not disclose details. The apparent agreement came together sooner than most observers expected after Trump’s 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports virtually halted $600 billion in yearly trade between the world’s two largest economies.
“It is important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought,” U.S. Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, said from Geneva in brief remarks to reporters. “That being said, there was a lot of groundwork that went into these two days.”
The two days of meetings in Switzerland were the first between top leaders of the U.S. and China since Trump imposed the sweeping tariffs on China, which responded with 125 per cent retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports.
Heading into the weekend trade negotiations, Trump signalled a willingness to drop U.S. tariffs on China to an 80 per cent rate, though it was not immediately clear if either side agreed to lower tariffs on the other.
“I am happy to report that we made substantial progress between U.S. and China in the very important trade talks,” Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, who led the talks in Geneva, stated. “We will be giving details tomorrow, but I can tell you that the talks were productive.”
Bessent said the White House would conduct a “complete briefing” on the morning of May 12 to discuss details of the agreement.
GRANTMAKERS across the political spectrum, including the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation, are discussing possible ways to respond, should the administration make such an attempt, said people involved in the effort.
Many of the foundations have discussed whether to seek legal representation as a class or individually should their tax status come under fire.
Some foundations also have been covering part of the legal and communications expenses behind the effort, said a person familiar with the matter.
The Trump administration hasn’t explicitly pledged to revoke foundations’ tax-exempt status, though it is exploring ways to challenge the tax-exempt status of non-profits more broadly. He has also threatened Harvard University with revocation of its tax-exempt status and hinted at future actions against specific non-profits.
Stripping foundations of their tax-exempt status could shrink the amount of money they raise and give to causes, hurting what foundation executives and trustees describe as the unique American asset of institutionalised philanthropy.
