Trump’s Economic Plan Amounts to Vague Tax Cuts, Deregulation, and Trade Wars: New at Reason

Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy takes a look at Donald Trump’s big economic speech in Detroit yesterday:

Presidential nominee Donald Trump wants “to jump start America,” and thinks “it won’t be that hard.” In a speech delivered at the Detroit Economic Club, he outlined his plan for the economy. It boils down some tax cuts, eliminating regulations, and engaging in trade wars.

A significant portion of the speech was spent attacking Hillary Clinton. Trump noted that her outdated policies have been tried and failed all over the country. Detroit, he says, is an example of such failure.The city’s unemployment is twice that of the national average, capital income is half of the national average and over 40 percent of the city’s residents live in poverty.

Eight years of Democratic rule in Detroit, he remarked, led to 7 million of Americans added to the ranks of those in poverty, 12 million added to the food stamp program, and the labor force participation rate at its lowest in forty years. He repeated inaccurate claims that American household are making $4,000 less than 16 years ago but rightly noted that the official unemployment number of 5 percentdoes not give an accurate picture of the health of the labor market.

Ignoring the role played by big spenders like George W. Bush, he blamed the Obama-Clinton tax, spending, and regulation policies for producing “1.2 percent growth, the weakest recovery since the Great Depression and a doubling of the national debt.”

According to Trump, Clinton is “the candidate if the past. Ours is the campaign of the future.” Never mind that Trump’s description of the brilliant future he envisions for America resembles Detroit in the 1950’s.

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