Backlash

Excélsior's front page was devoted to the denials from the elite business community that their tax contribution amounts to 2 percent of their profits, as Calderón claimed yesterday. It's kind of an odd dynamic, in that a business-friendly president went after business, and business doesn't quite know how to respond. As such, despite the unusually aggressive comments from Calderón (relatively speaking), the responses from representatives of business were generally reserved. Take this comment, from the president of the Coordinating Business Council:

We don't share his opinion that the big businesses aren't contributing. We think that they are contributing and that they are within the legal framework.

Take that, Felipe! Of course, some people, like Ricardo Salinas, Mexico's third richest man, were a bit more cantankerous in their assessment:

Then what does the government live on if it's not the corporate tax and then who is paying the corporate tax? What the SAT [Mexico's version of the IRS] does is the responsibility of the government.