Trump's economic plans include proposed tariffs, tax cuts and no taxes on tips

Trump Economics: first night of Republican National Convention kept its official focus on economy Monday even after Saturday's shooting at a rally in Pennsylvania in which former President Donald Trump was injured.

Speakers argued that Trump would fix inflation and bring back prosperity simply by returning to White House as president. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin lamented, “Tonight, America, land of opportunity, just doesn't feel like that anymore.” But Trump has released few hard numbers and no real policy language or legislative blueprints, and most of speakers Monday didn't get into details eir. Inste, his campaign is betting that voters care more about attitude than policy specifics.

Trump says he wants tariffs on tre partners and no taxes on tips. He would like to knock corporate tax rate down a tick. Republican platform also promises to “defeat” inflation and “quickly bring down all prices,” in dition to pumping out more oil, natural gas, and coal.

platform would dress illegal immigration in part with “largest deportation programme in American history.” And Trump would also scrap President Joe Biden's policies to develop market for electric vehicles and renewable energy.

Democrats and several leing economists say math shows that Trump's ideas would cause an explosive bout of inflation, wallop middle class, and — by his extending his soon-to-expire tax cuts — heap anor $5 trillion-plus onto national debt.

Associated Press sent Trump campaign 20 basic questions in June to clarify his economic views and campaign declined to answer any of m. Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump best speaks for himself and directed AP to video clips of him.

By contrast, Biden has an exhaustive 188-page budget proposal that lays out his economic vision, even as his campaign h increasingly devolved before Saturday's rally shooting into questions about his age and wher he should remain nominee after a self-defeating June 27 debate.

A recent analysis by Peterson Institute of International Economics showed that deporting 1.3 million workers would cause size of US economy to shrink by 2.1 per cent, essentially creating a recession.

Stephen Moore, an informal Trump viser and economist at Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said Trump is unique in that he's alrey been president and voters can judge him off his record in office.

“You want to know what he's going to do in his second term, look at what he did in his first term,” Moore said.

Democrats have argued that Trump would be more extreme in his second term, using his own remarks to say he would put independent federal agencies under his direct control and use federal government to settle scores with his perceived enemies. Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 blueprint is a template for what a second term would look like, y argue, a claim that Trump has disputed.

But Moore said he believes that Trump would be pragmatic in office and focus on needs of business to drive economic growth.

“re is an idea that it's going to be like slash and burn — I don't think it's going to be a rical agenda,” Moore said.

Some of Trump's plans have gotten bipartisan backing. Both of Neva's senators, Jacky Rosen and Carine Cortez Masto, are Democrats who would like to ban taxes on tips paid to workers, even as Biden White House favors a higher minimum wage for tipped workers.

Companies do like Trump's ideas to cut regulations and furr lower corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 20 per cent. tax rate h been 35 per cent when he became president in 2017. Democrats, by comparison, want a 28 per cent corporate tax rate to fund programs for middle class and deficit reduction.

But Trump has also floated huge tariffs that he says would protect US manufacturing jobs. Biden preserved tariffs on China that Trump introduced and went a step furr by banning exports of vanced computer chips to China.

Companies generally dislike tariffs — which are taxes on imports — because y can raise costs, which are n likely borne by consumers. An analysis by economists Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely found that Trump's tariffs would cost a typical US household $1,700 a year in what would effectively be a tax hike.

Trump's tariff plans could worsen inflation as a result, even though Republican says in videos that he would reduce inflation. It's unclear how Trump would lower inflation, which peaked in 2022 at 9.1% and has since eased to 3 per cent annually.

“ tariff issue is extremely important — and people are not paying enough attention to magnitude of Trump tariff policy, what consequences would be,” said Clausing, a former Biden Treasury Department official and professor at University of California, Los Angeles.

But tariffs might be more of a political winner than an economic strategy, according to a research paper earlier this year by economists David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson.

research found that tariffs during Trump's first term did not increase employment, but tariffs did help Trump politically in 2020 election in industrial areas that lost jobs to China and or countries.

Clausing noted that Trump is proposing tariffs on more than $3 trillion of imports, a 10-fold increase over what he did in his first term. She noted that tariffs could make it more expensive to bring in raw materials that US factories need while also raising prices for consumers alrey struggling with high inflation. She said she wants people to understand risks Trump's economic policies could pose before it's too late.

"I think people will notice when everything gets wildly expensive,” she said. “This is going to be a huge disaster.”