“I think we can do better than that”, Trump said of his four-percent goal at the Economic Club of NY on Thursday, noting that economists didn’t want him to promise any more than four percent.
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Trump advisor David Malpass countered by saying President Ronald Reagan’s policies did right the ship, after two recessions in the early 1980s due to an “extended period of malaise” left over from Jimmy Carter’s time in the White House.
The US economy is now creating 2.5 million jobs a year, and is therefore already on pace to achieve Mr Trump’s goal. But entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare would be shielded from any cuts. And of course no Trump address on the economy would be complete without an obligatory and nonsensical attack on free trade – sure enough he mentioned a possible trade war with China and how he’ll renegotiate NAFTA.
The last time economic growth was within shooting distance of 4 percent was in 2004 under President Bush, when it clocked in at 3.8 percent.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump laid out an aggressive economic vision Thursday, setting an ambitious goal of four percent growth and knocking rival Hillary Clinton for offering Americans nothing but a “welfare check”. The U.S. has achieved that growth rate only once in the past 15 years.
“By lowering rates, streamlining deductions and simplifying the process, we will add millions of new jobs”, he said.
Trump’s proposal included reducing the number of individual tax brackets from seven to three, as well as lowering corporate tax to 15%. With the pass-through cut included, Tax Foundation economists estimate, that cost would grow by at least $1 trillion.
The rest would come from nearly $1 trillion in spending cuts made over the next decade, which Trump would accomplish by cutting one penny from every dollar from certain segments of the government each year.
Trump’s projections are based on rosy forecasts of the job gains that would result from tax cuts and reduced regulation.
Donald Trump unleashed a firestorm of criticism from liberals, conservatives and those in between when he called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
“Trump took the budgetary criticism seriously, and made a case that it actually adds up”, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
Trump says that he has a lot of regulatory and trade reform ideas in mind.
“Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create. financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from [his] main message”, Donald Trump Jr. told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in an interview published Wednesday. “The only thing she can offer is a welfare check”, he said.
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And he was bleak about the prospects of the country if he is not elected.
