In moving to close some of the loopholes in the porous US tax code, President Barack Obama has taken on mightier forces than a retreating Republican party. Multinational companies, which will see their foreign earnings taxed more heavily, have dispatched a battalion of lobbyists to fight the plan. Mr Obama should not let this deter him: the proposals are a step in the right direction. They do little, however, to address the fundamental challenges of international taxation.

Few object to the part of the plan that cracks down on illegal tax evasion. More controversially, the administration wants to close off certain currently legal techniques for tax avoidance by targeting the law’s differing treatment of foreign-source and domestic earnings.