One of the good things about Wilbur and I, we have actually been bankers.
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These appointments are quite different from the current regime.
At the Treasury, Mnuchin will be in charge of financing the nation’s debt. Both current secretary positions were more recent appointments under President Obama, with Lew appointed in early 2013 and Pritzker in mid-2013.
Trump had been under criticism for exposing himself to potential conflicts if he kept a role in his global business while being president.
Mnuchin has had a relatively low public profile – another Trump advisor and fundraiser, the fund manager Anthony Scaramucci, has been more visible discussing economy policy with the media.
A Trump ad that aired during the final days of the campaign called hedge fund manger George Soros – a Clinton supporter who is a business associate of Mnuchin – someone who controls “the levers of power in Washington”.
In his first extensive comments, the former Goldman Sachs executive and hedge fund mogul said the Trump tax plan would include lowering the corporate tax rate and creating an incentive for US corporations to bring back trillions of dollars in overseas earnings. There would be a cap on mortgage interest payments, though “some deductibility” would continue, said Mnuchin. He also owns a waterfront estate in Palm Beach, Florida, down the road from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club and resort. They also helped finance the movie “Avatar”.
Mnuchin also said the Trump administration will work “reasonably fast” to overhaul housing finance.
Steven Mnuchin leaving the Trump Tower in NY on November 14.
Trump has vowed to cut corporate taxes, as a bid to encourage multinational companies to repatriate their earnings, and to scrap the 2010 Dodd-Frank reform legislation, which was enacted to protect consumers and the financial system from Wall Street excesses that helped cause the 2008 crisis.
As it is, Trump already raised the income tax rates he originally proposed (10%, 20%, 25%) to conform to those in the House plan (12%, 25%, 33%). They are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and they go out and borrow money against their overseas bank accounts.
“Mr. Mnuchin is a Wall Street insider with ties to big banks that have a troubling past of putting profits ahead of consumers and taxpayers”, Waters continued. One likely change is that the average Treasury maturity is likely to extend further out while rates are low. Mnuchin said he wanted to bring “a lot of cash back to the USA”, proposing a one-time 10 percent repatriation tax to return corporate tax revenue held overseas, another key promise by Trump.
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On trade, both Mnuchin and Ross said they did not want to be in regional trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the North American Free Trade Agreement because it was too easy to give up a large number of concessions during negotiations.
