Dem
49
GOP
51
Donald Trump has been going hog-wild releasing economic policy proposals this week, including a big pile of them in conjunction with a speech at the Economic Club of New York. Given that the man once ran on a platform of "please refer to our platform from 4 years ago," his sudden interest in being wonky is... uncharacteristic. One has to presume he's setting up something for the debate.
In any case, both the Trump and the Harris campaigns have put forward tax proposals that are fleshed-out enough for The New York Times to do a comparison, with some help from professional economists. The findings are very interesting.
If you look at what might be called the top-line numbers, the two candidates' ideas aren't that different. Every politician talks about helping the middle class, and both Trump and Harris have plans that would ostensibly do that. More specifically, a standard middle-class family would realize a return of $1,700 more each year under Trump's plan, as compared to $2,200 more each year under Harris' plan. Obviously, $500 isn't a huge amount of money (especially if you think of it as a bit less than $10 a week), but it's not zero, either. So, advantage Harris, if only slightly.
Once you get into the weedier details, however, the picture changes a fair bit. To start, the Harris plan would hit the top 0.1% of earners ($14 million/year or more) with an additional $167,000 in tax bills. On the other hand, the Trump plan would give those same folks an additional $377,000 back. That's a difference of over $500,000 a year for the top-top-top earners.
Meanwhile, to balance (imbalance?) the books, Trump—despite his membership in a party that is constantly carping about the national debt—would add $5.8 trillion to the debt over 10 years. Harris, by contrast, would add $1.2 trillion. Needless to say, $1.2 trillion is a lot of money. However, given the rate at which the debt has grown in recent years, it would actually represent a change in the right direction. The last president to add so little to the debt was George H.W. Bush, and he did it in 4 years (not 10), and in 1990s dollars. Trump's plan, by contrast, would only improve on two presidents' outlays—the $7 trillion added to the debt under Barack Obama's budgets, and the $6.7 trillion added by the budgets of... Donald Trump.
Put another way, whoever put together Trump's economic proposals very clearly worked to give him a talking point about the middle class, but otherwise pursued some very... controversial ideas, let's say. And it actually gets worse. If Trump were to pursue some of his other promises, it would change the math on his tax proposals. To take one example, the Times' analysis finds that if Trump imposed the tariffs he says he would impose, then the average middle-class family would be down $1,700 instead of up $2,200. To take another example, Trump's promise to bring back "dirt-cheap gas" would merely require... a global recession.
On that note, gas prices are dropping rapidly right now, due to high oil production, such that gas might well be under $3/gallon by November. If so, that would certainly take some of the oomph out of the "dirt-cheap gas" promise. Also, if you believe that low gas prices work to the benefit of the party that holds the White House, then the $3/gallon gas would obviously be good news for the blue team.
The bottom line here is that not all policy proposals are created equal. Trump may have an actual platform these days, but his economic proposals are full of misdirection and smoke and mirrors. They're simply not compatible with each other; it's reminiscent of when George H.W. Bush derided Ronald Reagan's program as "voodoo economics." If Trump starts crowing about how much more the middle class will get under his leadership, the debate moderators should immediately press him on the details, and how they don't add up. They probably won't do that, mind you, but they should. (Z)