SACRAMENTO, June 26 — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pitching what he calls an “economic reset for America,” and it starts with a new federal tax aimed at billionaires. In a Substack post and video on Friday, the Democrat endorsed a nationwide “true minimum tax on billionaires.”
The idea is that the ultrawealthy would pay at least the same rate as their employees, CNBC reports, a nod to billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s long-touted “Buffett Rule.” Newsom also urged Congress to roll back corporate tax cuts enacted under President Trump, tighten inheritance rules, and shut down what he described as a “tax-free lifestyle loan” strategy, in which the rich borrow against their assets to slash taxable income.
Newsom’s plan includes a “national public equity fund” so “every American owns a stake in the future being built by AI.”
But while he’s backing federal changes, he’s still against a California ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. The governor argued that the proposal would send money and residents fleeing to other states and wouldn’t fund core programs.
“Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes,” he wrote, per the Guardian. Such battles, he said, shouldn’t be waged “state by state.”
The calculus here is strategic. Newsom is positioning himself on the national stage, framing the billionaire tax as a federal imperative rather than a state-level experiment. The broader stakes involve a governor who wants to lead a progressive economic reset but is wary of the political and fiscal blowback of going it alone in California.
What this signals is a careful balancing act. Newsom is trying to harness populist energy around taxing the ultrawealthy while avoiding the practical pitfalls that a state-level wealth tax would trigger. The governor’s argument that wealth is mobile and will flee high-tax jurisdictions is the same logic that has made the “Buffett Rule” a perennial talking point rather than enacted policy.
The “national public equity fund” is the most novel piece of the pitch, tying tax reform to a vision of shared ownership in the AI-driven economy. But the details remain thin, and the path through a Republican-controlled Congress is unclear.
For now, the governor has picked his battlefield: Washington, not Sacramento. The question is whether his federal push will gain traction or remain a Substack proposition.
