The Republican tax law has slashed the federal corporate tax rate to 21 percent, from 35 percent. The Trump administration has argued that this cut will translate into big raises for workers, but many economists say that most of those gains will actually flow to shareholders and top executives. Take Walmart. The company says it will spend $700 million on bonuses and higher wages for cashiers, drivers and other hourly workers. That’s a tidy sum, but the company is spending far more — $4 billion — to buy back its stock, which will benefit its investors by raising the share price. And it is worth keeping in mind that Walmart also raised wages when tax rates were higher under President Barack Obama.

Apple says it is repatriating most of the $252 billion of cash it holds abroad by making a onetime tax payment of $38 billion to the federal government. The company also has promised to create 20,000 jobs and build a new campus. This sounds great. But thanks to the Republican tax law, Apple will pay at a fraction of the tax rate on its foreign profits that it would have paid at under previous tax law — just 15.5 percent on profits held as cash and 8 percent on earnings held in nonliquid assets like real estate and equipment. It is hard to believe that lawmakers made the right call by giving Apple and other multinational companies this huge tax break. Research has shown that a 2004 law allowing companies to bring foreign profits home at a discounted tax rate did little to boost investment or create jobs and that most of the tax savings went to shareholders.

In cutting the corporate tax rate, Republicans have argued that the 35 percent rate was holding American businesses back relative to foreign competitors. This is hard to square with the fact that companies based in the United States have prospered in recent decades. Apple, for example, has become one of the world’s most valuable companies and went from employing 5,000 people in the United States in 1998 to employing 84,000 this year.

There’s nothing wrong with cutting taxes on corporations as part of a broader reform that closes loopholes, increases American competitiveness and helps create well-paying jobs. Unfortunately, none of those conditions apply in this case.

As many experts have pointed out, corporate tax cuts passed by Congress and signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s did not turbocharge wages or investment. Similarly, a series of corporate tax cuts in the last 10 years or so by Labour and Conservative governments in Britain — to 19 percent, from 30 percent — did not produce a boom in wages or investment. In fact, wages grew faster in the United States, according to an article on Vox by Kimberly Clausing, an economics professor, and Edward Kleinbard, a law professor.