I read Zoe Williams’ piece on Americans renouncing their citizenship with particular and personal interest (‘I don’t want to be part of a dictatorship’: the Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship, 28 April). The rot started well before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, though he and his hostile team and policies have exacerbated that.
Look back to George W Bush’s fight against terrorism following 9/11, one aspect of which involved tracking down terrorism funding by setting onerous reporting regulations on US citizens abroad, and on international financial institutions in which US citizens had an interest. Eventually some of those financial institutions outside the US decided they simply would not permit US citizens to invest in, bank with, or take out their products.
