Trump’s Tax Plans: Good, Bad, Ugly?

Plus: Trump endorses Larry Hogan, violent crime decreases, and more…

ROBBY SOAVE

While that may not seem like a massive difference, it is quite a contrast with President Joe Biden’s tax policy. The 2017 corporate tax cuts are set to expire in 2025, at which point the tax rate would revert to 35 percent. Biden has proposed a corporate tax rate of 28 percent.

Trump’s relationship with business leaders has not always been positive. Many of the gathered CEOs—who met with Trump during a meeting of the Business Roundtable in Washington, D.C., on Thursday—had denounced him in the wake of the Capitol riot. But according to the Times, Trump largely succeeded in reassuring them that he would pursue pro-growth policies.

Now for the bad: During a meeting with GOP lawmakers, Trump also floated replacing the income tax with an “all tariff policy“—that is, with taxes on imports. Tariffs that high would be disastrous. According to the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), it would theoretically take a tariff rate of 71 percent to replace the revenue from the income tax. Such a punitively high trade barrier would wreak havoc on the economy—and would dramatically reduce imports, meaning the actual revenue raised would not be sufficient.

The “revenue hit would be worsened by the massive economic disruption a 71 percent tariff would inflict on the economy, the resulting lost exports and global trade war, and the indirect impact of transitioning from a progressive individual income tax system to a regressive import tax system,” writes NTU’s Bryan Riley.

Other economists have reached similar conclusions.

Speaking of Trump and choices, the former president has endorsed Larry Hogan. Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, is running for that state’s Senate seat against Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. If he wins, he would flip the seat—and potentially the U.S. Senate, giving Republicans control of the chamber.

Hogan is a moderate Republican who has frequently criticized Trump. He did not support Trump in 2016 or 2020. With respect to the former president’s prosecution in New York, Hogan called on the American people to “respect the verdict.”

All of this made Hogan an unlikely endorsement for Trump. Republicans want the seat, but Trump has not been especially kind to fellow party members who decline to show him support. Maybe that’s changing.

“I’m about the party, and I’m about the country,” said Trump. “And I would like to see him win.”

Violent crime declined precipitously in the past year. According to the latest report from the FBI, violent crime and property crime are down significantly for the first several months of 2024.

“A comparison of data from agencies that voluntarily submitted at least two or more common months of data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates reported violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent,” says the report. “Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent. Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.” These numbers are preliminary and are likely to change. But as Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella recently noted, the picture they paint “tracks with other early data from 2024”; he suggests that “the general trend would likely hold” even if these figures turn out to be exaggerated.

This is good news, of course, and it shows that violence—which spiked during the pandemic—is falling. Experts caution, however, that the summer months are often the most violent.

Crime is also declining in the nation’s capital, which saw a massive spike in homicides last year. For an explanation of what went wrong, read Joe Bishop-Henchman’s story in the July 2024 issue of Reason.

Scenes from Washington, D.C.:

QUICK HITS

• In other Trump news, the former president made some bizarre comments about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
• Trump also made an appearance with Logan Paul.
• Sen. John Fetterman (D–Penn.) and his wife were recently in a car accident—and it was apparently his fault.

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has a filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that excluding him from the CNN debate violates election law. We discussed this on Rising:

• “Far-right” parties are winning elections in Europe.
• Russia plans to bring espionage charges against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
• The Supreme Court will not hear a challenge to the legality of the abortion pill.

A Detroit native and a graduate of the University of Michigan, Soave now lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Carrie, and their two Yorkies, Caesar and Oliver.

GET REASON MAGAZINE