Donald Trump’s wrecking ball is already swinging hard at international agreements. One early casualty? American participation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) global corporation tax deal.

With a single executive order, Trump pulled the US out of cross-country plans to impose a global minimum 15 per cent corporation tax and forcibly redistribute some multinationals’ profits to deter “profit shifting”. European governments salivating over new revenue from American technology firms are scrambling, with Trump threatening tariffs and other retaliation should they continue to target big American businesses.

This raises an underrated question: might the US leave the OECD entirely? Trump has already issued notice to withdraw from the World Health Organisation and pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement — international co-operation with stronger rationales. At home, he has given Elon Musk the green light to put US foreign aid “through the wood chipper”, precisely to stop taxpayer money flowing abroad. Will his administration really keep America in a Paris-based forum that pushes tax harmonisation and social policies he perceives at odds with US interests?

True, the OECD was long seen by most as a benign organisation for economic co-operation. Article 1 of its convention commits it to help accelerate economic growth, expand global trade and ensure financial stability. It played a key role in eradicating harmful double taxation and cutting tax rates on cross-border investment. It still produces useful statistics. Yet over time it has strayed far from its original, pro-market mission. Once a guardian of liberal capitalism, it evolved into something else entirely.

The flashpoint here is its global tax deal, the culmination of a decades-long OECD-led campaign against “tax competition”. Initially, the US joined talks to stop extraterritorial taxation by some European states through digital services taxes. Yet the final Biden-backed deal — an international “tax cartel” — is seen by Republicans as a capitulation to just that extraterritorial taxation, benefiting bloated and growthless European welfare states at Americans’ expense, while encouraging subsidies over tax cuts.

And it’s not just tax. The OECD has become a forum for the progressive wokeism that Trump’s administration is defunding domestically. While much of its work remains technical, it actively promotes “gender budgeting” and “sustainable and inclusive lives” and churns out statistics predicated on diversity, net zero and ESG goals. It’s difficult to see why Trump will want US taxpayer money funding a Parisian bureaucracy that increasingly reads like a left-wing think tank.

Indeed, the warning signs for the OECD’s staff should be flashing red. This week, Trump officials highlighted the funding of transgender comic books in Peru and equity, diversity and inclusion support for Irish musicals and Serbian workplaces to justify their constitutionally dubious effort to shutter the United States Agency for International Development. If the fact that that agency also saves lives from Aids in Africa wasn’t enough to shield it from the axe, any OECD pleas about the importance of its mission beyond tax and diversity issues seems unlikely to wash.

Trump’s administration also withdrew this week from the United Nations’s new global tax initiative, calling it “unwelcome overreach” and “inconsistent with US priorities”. A statement made crystal clear: “This convention would unacceptably hamper nations’ ability to enact tax policies that serve the interests of their citizens, businesses, and workers.” Again, if that logic applies to the UN, why not the OECD?

Even if he doesn’t push for a full American OECD exit, Trump’s willingness to threaten tariffs on allies or to scrap US Nato funding shows his readiness to use America’s financial power to force change. And the OECD relies heavily on US backing. America funds 18.3 per cent of the OECD’s €229 million core budget, plus a big chunk of voluntary contributions for specific programmes.

Last year, Republican senators were already threatening to withdraw these latter funds over concerns about the corporate tax deal. Don’t be surprised if Trump turns the screw by threatening an OECD exit soon.