When it comes to tax policy, Donald Trump already had a problem. His 2017 tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations were, by practically every measure, an expensive and unpopular failure. It’s against this backdrop that the Republican and his allies not only want to extend the tax breaks that didn’t work — adding trillions of dollars to the national debt in the process — they also want to add new tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations.
But the former president’s ideas when it comes to trade and tariffs makes all of this quite a bit worse.
It was last year when Team Trump made clear that the presumptive GOP nominee, if given a second term, intended to impose massive new tariffs, which a Washington Post report said would set the stage for a “global economic war.” CNBC reported late last week that the Republican candidate went a step further in describing his vision while speaking with congressional allies.
Donald Trump on Thursday brought up the idea of imposing an “all tariff policy” that would ultimately enable the U.S. to get rid of the income tax, sources in a private meeting with the Republican presidential candidate told CNBC.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes described this as “one of the most deranged policies” of all of time, and it’s worth understanding why. As the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell explained in her latest column:
The expected costs of Trump’s recent tariff proposals would be staggering. For example, his plan for a universal 10 percent tariff coupled with a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods would more than wipe out any savings most Americans would get from extending his 2017 income tax cuts, according to estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The bottom 80 percent of households would see a tax increase on net.
In other words, most Americans, including the entirety of the middle class, would end up paying more, not less, under Trump’s vision. Why? Because Trump’s tariffs would make products cost more, and since working families spend a greater percentage of what they make on these products, they’d end up worse off.
The result is an incredible contrast for voters: President Joe Biden’s agenda asks more from the wealthy and big corporations, while Trump’s vision is built on tax breaks for those on top, and a regressive trade policy that would ask more from working families. I’ve argued repeatedly that it’s a mistake to see Trump as a “populist.” This adds fresh evidence to the argument. To be sure, a common refrain over the last few days is that Congress would never approve such a radical agenda. Perhaps not, but Republican Rep. Byron Donalds appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend, and when asked about Trump’s tariffs policy, the Florida congressman said, “There’s some merit to it.” There really isn’t.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
