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June 26, 2026 / 11:44 AM EDT
/ CBS News
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling for a national minimum tax on billionaires and a federal fund that would give every American a stake in the wealth created by artificial intelligence, laying out a populist economic agenda in an essay published Friday on Substack. At the same time, Newsom, who is mulling a 2028 White House bid, announced he will vote against a billionaire wealth tax on the ballot in California this November.His pitch for the federal tax on the nation's wealthiest is what he calls a "true minimum tax on billionaires — a modern Buffett rule — that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay.""Today, the office worker can shoulder a higher tax rate than the heiress," Newsom said. "The construction worker could pay a higher rate than the developer. And the delivery driver can end up paying a higher rate than the founder of the company whose packages he delivers."He blamed a system that grew out of "decades of loopholes written by lobbyists and upheld by politicians who knew exactly who they worked for." "But this system can be undone," Newsom wrote.One day earlier, the union-backed state billionaire tax measure qualified for the California ballot. Newsom says he opposes it in part because the fight over taxing the ultrawealthy should not be one undertaken by a state, but rather, by the federal government. Because billionaires can simply relocate to avoid any single state's taxes, he argues that the battle belongs at the federal level "where this broken system was created in the first place."
