Donald Trump’s Trade Plan Will Hurt The Very People He Promises To Help

[applegrove]

Donald Trump’s Trade Plan Will Hurt The Very People He Promises To Help

by Johnathan Cohn at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-trade-policy_us_577809eee4b09b4c43c0b2b0

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That’s particularly true given the rest of Trump’s agenda. His statements about policy are infrequent, vague and sometimes contradictory, making it difficult to pinpoint exactly what he would do as president. But the one policy proposal he has outlined in detail — his tax cut — reveals quite a lot. He would lower taxes on both corporations and individuals, reducing government revenue by something like $10 trillion over the next 10 years, according to analysis by the Brookings- and Urban Institute-run Tax Policy Center.

That’s a lot of money, even by the standards of Republican tax cuts. And while the wealthiest Americans would get windfalls from Trump’s plan, working-class Americans would get significantly less money, in both absolute and proportional terms.

Of course, Trump claims his tax cut would make the economy grow even faster. But the quick addition of so much new debt, combined with the contractionary effect of Trump’s new tariffs, could lead to a sudden and serious recession, as a recent report from Moody’s Analytics suggested.

And for working-class people, the real cost of the tax cut might come over the longer term, since the loss of so much revenue would almost certainly require massive spending cuts — first to discretionary programs like education, infrastructure maintenance or biomedical research; and later to entitlements, including Medicare and Social Security, even though Trump has pledged to protect those programs.


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[cosmicone]

1. ^^^ THIS ^^^^ n/t