Editorials of The Times

After President Donald Trump signed the Republican tax cut into law, companies put out cheery announcements that they were giving workers bonuses because of their expected windfalls from the tax reductions. The president and Republican lawmakers quickly held up these news releases as vindication for their argument that cutting the top federal corporate tax rate to 21 percent, from 35 percent, would boost workers’ incomes even as it added $1.5 trillion to the debt that future generations would have to pay off.

Now corporate announcements and analyst reports confirm what honest observers always said — this claim is pure fantasy. As executives tell investors what they intend to do with their tax savings and their spending plans are tabulated into neat charts and graphs, the reports jibe with what most experts said would happen: Companies are rewarding their stockholders.

Businesses are buying back shares, which creates demand for the stocks, boosts share prices and benefits investors. Some of the cash is going to increase dividends. And a chunk will go to acquiring other businesses, creating larger corporations that face less competition.

In addition to benefiting investors, these maneuvers will end up boosting the pay of top executives because their compensation packages are often tied to the price of their companies’ stock. Finally, a small sliver of the money will find its way into paychecks of rank-and-file employees, but it won’t be a big boost and will probably come in the form of a temporary bonus, rather than a lasting raise.

Morgan Stanley analysts estimated that 43 percent of corporate tax savings would go to buybacks and dividends and nearly 19 percent would help pay for mergers and acquisitions. Just 17 percent would be used for capital investment, and even a smaller share, 13 percent, would go toward bonuses and raises. Other Wall Street analysts have issued similar reports. If more evidence was needed, Axios reported that just nine pharmaceutical companies have announced $50 billion in buybacks since the tax law was passed.

Trump might argue that it doesn’t much matter that the tax cuts will be a boon for investors because many Americans own stocks. The president has recently touted the rising value of 401(k) accounts as a benefit of the tax law. But roughly half of all families own no stock, and most people have holdings that are worth less than $5,000. Most stock holdings, a whopping 84 percent, are in the hands of people whose incomes put them in the top 10 percent of households.

Republicans might further argue that none of this matters because the tax law is becoming more popular as people learn more about it. Indeed, a recent poll for The Times found that the law now has more supporters than opponents. But this swing in public sentiment might be less important than it appears. Consider the results of a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll that shows that just 25 percent of registered voters said they had noticed an increase in their paycheck because of lower tax withholding while 51 percent had not. The poll also found that high-income people were more likely to notice that their take-home pay had gone up. That’s because Republicans designed the law to principally benefit wealthy families while offering crumbs to low-income and middle class families.

Those crumbs, by the way, disappear after a few years. Further, many taxpayers in states like California, New Jersey and New York will be hit with higher tax bills when they file their 2018 tax returns and realize that they can now only deduct up to $10,000 in state and local taxes.

There was a legitimate argument for reforming the tax code in a way that reduced the corporate tax rate, closed loopholes and made the economy fairer and more productive. But Republicans chose a plan that rewards the rich at the expense of workers. They had to lie to make this scheme seem legitimate. Now the true effects are coming to fruition.

The last thing the Middle East needs is another country with the potential to build nuclear weapons. Yet that could happen if the United States mishandles Saudi Arabia’s plans to enter the nuclear power business and erect as many as 16 nuclear reactors for electricity generation over 25 years.

The Saudis aren’t saying they want to become the second country, after Israel, to have a nuclear arsenal in the increasingly unstable region. They insist the reactors would be used only to generate energy for domestic purposes, so they can rely on their huge reserves of oil to generate income from overseas.

Still, there are growing signs that the Saudis want the option of building nuclear weapons to hedge against their archrival, Iran, which had a robust nuclear program before accepting severe curbs under a 2015 deal with the United States and other major powers.

Obama administration efforts to negotiate an agreement on transferring civil nuclear technology — required before a country can buy U.S. nuclear technology — faltered over the Saudis’ refusal to make a legally binding commitment to forgo uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, which could be used to produce fuel for nuclear weapons. The United Arab Emirates made a commitment like that in its 2009 agreement, setting the nonproliferation “gold standard” for civil nuclear cooperation deals.

Now new negotiations are being pursued under a president who caters to the needs of American business and aggressively courts Saudi leaders. In theory, Trump is well-placed to cajole the Saudis to accept the gold standard. He can argue that it makes more sense for Riyadh to buy enriched fuels for the reactors from relatively low-cost foreign suppliers than to produce it in Saudi Arabia. Such an agreement will further cement ties with the United States, which has promised to protect the kingdom from its enemies.

But there are questions about what limits the Trump administration would require, and the Saudis would accept, as part of the agreement the two sides are about to start negotiating.

Insisting on strict conditions could force the Saudis to buy instead from Russia or China, which don’t impose such nonproliferation rules, or from France and South Korea, thus penalizing a moribund U.S. nuclear industry eager for the lucrative new business. Westinghouse and other U.S.-based companies are discussing a consortium to bid on the multibillion-dollar project.

However, a failure to incorporate crucial restrictions in any deal would leave the Saudis free to repurpose the technology for nuclear weapons. That would undercut decades of American-led efforts to prevent the spread of these arms.

The United States has long been a leader in nuclear technology with its sales to other countries governed by bilateral civil nuclear agreements that require adherence to nine nonproliferation criteria.

They include guarantees that none of the nuclear materials provided by the United States will be used for nuclear explosives, that none of the technology or classified data will be transferred to third parties without American consent, and that the country involved in the agreement will not enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium.

But Saudi officials are still insisting that they have a right to enrichment and reprocessing under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which guaranteed nations access to such technologies if they forsake nuclear weapons.

If these disagreements stalemate negotiations, the United States could lose the opportunity to impose any nonproliferation, nuclear security and nuclear safety conditions on the Saudi program at all.

That is why a compromise proposed by Robert Einhorn, a former American nuclear negotiator, may be worth considering, but only if efforts to set stricter standards fail. It would require the Saudis to make a legally binding commitment to forgo enrichment and reprocessing for 15 years, not indefinitely, thus kicking tough questions down the road.

Ultimately, Congress must assert its right to have the final say on a deal, and set strict conditions if the administration does not. Those should include intrusive inspections of Saudi nuclear facilities, similar to those Iran has accepted.

Given Trump’s flip attitude toward nuclear weapons, Congress’s responsibility affects the nuclear future of not just Saudi Arabia, but the decisions that Turkey, Egypt and other countries make about acquiring nuclear power. Lawmakers need to put protections in place so more countries don’t edge closer to having nuclear weapons.