Yellen's 'crucial' role in G7 tax agreement shows 'multilateralism is back,' EU official says

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen garnered praise Saturday for her role in brokering a Group of Seven agreement to back a 15 percent global minimum corporate tax, a move she called "significant and unprecedented."

Per Italy's Reppublica, Paolo Gentiloni, the European Union commissioner for economy, said the "extraordinary" deal "wouldn't have been possible without the recent change of the U.S. administration. Multilateralism is back. Yellen was crucial. Six months ago we were in the middle of nowhere."

Yellen and others are hoping to stymie the practice of companies "booking their profits" in so-called "tax havens," Reuters reports. The G7 agreement is seen as a first step toward a larger, global pact, and even though it's preliminary the deal is considered groundbreaking and has received widespread support, including from Facebook's vice president of global affairs, Nick Clegg.

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But not everyone is impressed. Oxfam, a major confederation of charitable organizations, criticized the 15 percent figure as "far too low," while the American Enterprise Institute's Kyle Pomerleau, a tax policy expert, said "this doesn't seem like a big deal to me," arguing that "it's one thing to agree on a rate." The "tricky part," he writes, will be agreeing on a base.