Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended on Tuesday a key provision of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill, saying it would stop foreign governments from siphoning hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue from U.S. companies and restore American control over trade and tax policy.

In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Bessent said the legislation includes new tools to retaliate against countries that impose what he called “unfair foreign taxes” on American firms — including digital services taxes and top-up levies under the OECD’s (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) global minimum tax framework.

“The U.S. tax system will stand next to what is called Pillar Two, and other countries are welcome to relinquish their fiscal and tax sovereignty to other nations,” Bessent said. “The United States will not. So this bill will allow us to prevent our corporate revenues from being drained into foreign treasuries—and that is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.”

At the heart of the plan is a new measure that would impose escalating surtaxes on income earned in the U.S. by companies, individuals, and even governments from nations that target American firms with extraterritorial taxes. The same countries could also face higher withholding taxes on U.S. investments and tougher rules under the Base Erosion and Anti-Abuse Tax (BEAT). Sovereign wealth funds and central banks from those countries would lose long-standing exemptions and become subject to U.S. tax on their holdings.

The provision — found in Section 899 of the bill — is designed to pressure foreign governments to roll back taxes that the administration views as discriminatory and coercive. It would start with a five-percentage-point surtax and escalate annually to a maximum of twenty points above the standard U.S. tax rate unless the targeted country reverses its policy.

Not surprisingly, the measure has become a top target of Washington’s corporate lobbyists. Multinational firms, foreign banks, and global trade associations are mounting an aggressive campaign to weaken or eliminate the provision, arguing it could lead to retaliatory measures and complicate international investment. But Trump officials say the pressure campaign proves the bill is doing what it’s supposed to: forcing globalist interests to confront a United States government that’s finally defending its own.

A senior administration official said there is a major lobbying effort to kill the new provision by people who have grown rich under a system that punishes American workers and rewards tax arbitrage.

“There’s a lot of misinformation about Section 899 in the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Bessent posted on his official X account Tuesday, linking to a video of his testimony. “The final text of OBBB will ensure that the U.S. continues to be the most investable country in the world, while undoing Biden’s bad tax policies.”

He continued:

For too long the U.S. has been the victim of unfair trade practices, extraterritorial taxes, non-tariff barriers, and tariffs. President Trump is creating a fair playing field for trade and tax, getting foreign governments to the table, and putting American businesses first.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the retaliatory tax provision could raise more than $100 billion over a decade. Administration officials say the real purpose is not revenue, but leverage.

“The goal is not to collect these taxes,” said one person familiar with the administration’s thinking. “The goal is to force other governments to stop hitting American companies with theirs.”