I’m not saying Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan’s clone, but I am wondering how the conservative intellectuals who insist Trump is “not a conservative” can keep saying that with a straight face. Especially so after Trump’s speech to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
In this speech, Trump could not have been bigger supply-sider. It’s as if Jack Kemp himself showed up to talk taxes, growth and Treasury revenues.
In a nutshell, Trump insisted that the number one goal of his tax proposal will be to take us toward a goal of 4 percent annualized GDP growth. The total value of his proposed tax cut has been estimated at $4.4 trillion over 10 years, and of course whenever a Republican proposes to cut taxes, the media hyperventilates about the “cost” of the tax cut.
Aside from the fact that “cost” is not really the right word, since taking in less money is not the same thing as spending money, Trump cut right to the heart of conservative economic thinking by asserting correctly that 4 percent annual growth would be sufficient to generate all the revenue “lost” by cutting rates as he proposes.
Of course, Trump knows that premise of the concern he’s addressing is wrong. It’s based on static economic analysis. Cutting a tax rate by a given percentage doesn’t mean your revenue will be cut by the exact same percentage. There are far too many variables. It depends on the change in economic activity, on spending, on savings, on retail sales, on industrial productivity, on what corporations do with their cash . . . there are far too many factors to justify such a simplistic view of the matter.
And yet, the news media and most of the political class act as if static analysis is the only kind based in reality. I know. Night is day. War is peace. You’re probably getting used to this stuff by now.
To get a sense of why Trump’s proposal is so important, check the latest reports on slumping retail sales and sluggish manufacturing output. You can’t tax what isn’t there to tax, and Obama’s high-tax, heavy-regulation policies have depressed the kinds of activity that would form the cornerstones of a healthy tax base. People who understand business – and Trump certainly does – understand that you can’t confiscate too much capital from the private sector and expect the private sector to produce the kind of wealth you need to keep the tax base strong.
So all you #NeverTrumpers who insist that Trump is no better than Hillary because he is really a New York liberal, how do you explain this? I suppose you can always insist that Trump doesn’t mean anything he says, which makes your charge that he is a secret liberal unfalsifiable. But maybe you would then need to ask yourself why Trump would choose to tout an economic philosophy that is sure to get him attacked by the left-wing media. The only way to make sense of that is if he actually believes what he’s saying.
I’ve read Trump’s 2011 book titled Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again. This was four years before he started running for president, and he was already touting conservative ideas - spelled out in detail and championed like a man who meant what he said. I realize that earlier in his life he supported more liberal ideas, and gave money to Democrat candidates. Because of that, some of you think he is insincere about the things he’s saying now.
You know what I think? I think some people learn from experience, and can believe something for a time only to discover that what they thought were good ideas really did not work. That’s why Donald Trump now sounds like a supply-sider – because he has really become one – and why those who still refuse to support him because they claim he is “not a conservative” sound increasingly absurd with every passing day.
I’m not saying Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan’s clone, but I am wondering how the conservative intellectuals who insist Trump is “not a conservative” can keep saying that with a straight face. Especially so after Trump’s speech to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday.
In this speech, Trump could not have been bigger supply-sider. It’s as if Jack Kemp himself showed up to talk taxes, growth and Treasury revenues.
In a nutshell, Trump insisted that the number one goal of his tax proposal will be to take us toward a goal of 4 percent annualized GDP growth. The total value of his proposed tax cut has been estimated at $4.4 trillion over 10 years, and of course whenever a Republican proposes to cut taxes, the media hyperventilates about the “cost” of the tax cut.
