I actually found an interesting columnist at ipolitics.ca named Peter Clark if anyone needs reading material. Nothing he talks about is related to FATCA or FBAR but as a former high level official in the Department of Finance he gives a good idea in many of his columns as to how the US negotiates with many of its trading partners. As he puts it a steel fist in a velvet glove. Much of what he talks about is the US’ “hardline” take it or leave it negotiating stance in something currently known as the Trans Pacific Partnership. Clark is not at all against free trade he is just very much against the US’s hardline negotiating tactics.
http://www.ipolitics.ca/author/peter-clark/
Here are some good quotes from one his latest pieces:
This “Chutzpah” Doctrine is based on the value of free access to the U.S. market. It ignores that the U.S. has already sold duty free access to many countries. This fish has been sold, re-sold, cleaned, gutted and digested numerous times. There is a risk that the U.S. will paint itself into a corner and overplay its hand.
The USTR, on the other hand, driven by an unrealistic and unattainable target end date, wants to serve up to Japan, Mexico and Canada a fait accompli on a take it or leave it basis. One of Noda’s most persuasive arguments for joining the TPP will crash and burn.
The broad range of U.S. demands include:
- more English in official documents (will the U.S. put more Japanese and French in theirs?);
- make it easier for financial services to engage in short selling as well as other “americanizations” to financial services to make them more functional;
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2012/02/03/peter-clark-exporting-the-tpp-melting-pot-americanizing-japan/
Once a deal is done the US will try to use its dominate position to impose unilateral changes.
Think NATO and inter-operability, made sense,
for everyone to use the same equipment,
then the US decided to only buy American.
How did this work for the Canadian aerospace industry? google “Avro Arrow”
“The broad range of U.S. demands include:
more English in official documents (will the U.S. put more Japanese and French in theirs?);”
HA! The US Embassy in Belgium’s website is very lazily translated. If you try to click on “American citizen services” while using the site in French or Dutch they kindly ask you to use the English version. Note that within this section is all of the important information related to, oh I don’t know, the fact that US citizens have tax responsibilities even if they don’t live in the US…
“Les informations concernant cette section n’étant pas disponible en français, nous vous renvoyons vers les pages appropriées du site anglophone”/”De pagina’s die deel uitmaken van dit gedeelte van de web site zijn alleen in het Engels beschikbaar. Wij verwijzen u dan ook telkens door naar een pagina op de Engelstalige site ”
I find that very arrogant to just assume that every US citizen speaks English. In contrast, I have lived under the jurisdiction of many different Italian consulates and they are all, without fail, translated perfectly from Italian into the language(s) of the country where it is located, even the sections exclusively for Italian citizens. Is it too much too ask the same of the US or do they not have enough people who handle French, Russian and Japanese? Foreign languages?!…Oh, the horror!
@Don Podormo. I agree with you totally. There are many (nobody knows really how many) persons born abroad to a US parent who speak no English, have never held a US passport, never once set foot in US territory, etc., yet they are US citizens and are subject to exactly the same US tax laws as are residents of the US. I fear that our State Department really fails to realize this. I get the impression that serving these non English speaking US citizens living abroad is somewhat of an afterthought to US consulates and embassies. If our governnment requires them to file US tax returns and pay US taxes, then the minimum it should do is provide information the language they understand.