Trump Says Biden's New Tax Plan Is 'Among the Largest Self-Inflicted Economic Wounds in History'
Former President Donald Trump took a big swipe at President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure and tax plan, which he unveiled on Wednesday.
“This legislation would be among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history,” Trump said in a statement, according to the Boston Herald.
“If this monstrosity is allowed to pass, the result will be more Americans out of work, more families shattered, more factories abandoned, more industries wrecked, and more Main Streets boarded up and closed down — just like it was before I took over the presidency 4 years ago,” he added.
“I then set record low unemployment, with 160 million people working.”
Trump went on to characterize the proposal as a “giveaway to China” and a “classic globalist betrayal by Joe Biden and his friends.”
Statement by President Trump on the Biden “infrastructure” spending plan pic.twitter.com/1tfBiYnWaz
— Sean Spicer (@seanspicer) March 31, 2021
Biden’s infrastructure plan calls for “$621 billion into transportation infrastructure such as bridges, roads, public transit, ports, airports and electric vehicle development,” according to CNBC.
This will reportedly include $174 billion to “win” the electric vehicle market.
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Additionally, it directs $400 billion to care for elderly and disabled Americans.
It would spend another $300 billion to build and retrofit affordable housing to be more green compliant.
Finally, $580 billion would go toward various manufacturing, research and development and job training projects.
To pay for all of this, Biden calls for the corporate tax rate to be increased from 21 percent to 28 percent.
The corporate tax rate in China, the world’s second-largest economy, is 25 percent.
The weighted average for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member nations is 26.30 percent. So the United States would be on the high end under Biden’s plan in relation to nations it competes against.
Also, “the plan would set the minimum tax on U.S. companies’ foreign income at 21%, up from 10.5% today,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
“We’re going to level the international playing field,” Biden said in the Wednesday speech, according to a transcript of his remarks.
The president promised taxes would not increase on individuals making less than $400,000 a year.
However, The WSJ editorial board argued the middle class will pay too in what would be the largest tax increase since 1968.
“Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increases will hit the middle class hard—in the value of their 401(k)s, the size of their pay packets, and what they pay for goods and services. This damage won’t show up immediately, especially as the economy booms as Covid eases this year, but the corrosive impact will compound in the coming years,” the board wrote in a Wednesday Op-Ed.
The Obama-Biden administration raised taxes on top-tier income earners, as well as on investment income, as the United States was emerging from the Great Recession a decade ago.
CNN reported that the administration oversaw the slowest economic recovery since World War II.
By contrast, former President Ronald Reagan implemented tax cuts and oversaw the largest peacetime expansion since the war, despite starting in a recession that arguably was worse than the Great Recession (unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent at the beginning of the Reagan presidency versus 10 percent a decade ago).
During his time in office, over 18 million new jobs were created, according to CNN.
Beyond cutting taxes, Reagan also slashed regulations on businesses and negotiated favorable trade deals.
During Obama’s two terms, just 11.6 million jobs were created, according to FactCheck.org, though there were approximately 80 million more people living in the country.
Trump followed the Reagan formula after taking office in 2017.
Prior to the COVID-19 shutdown, the United States was experiencing some of its best economic numbers in a long time, including a 3.5 percent unemployment rate — a half-century low.
Further, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans were enjoying the lowest unemployment rates ever recorded.
With Trump’s policies still in place, the economy rebounded strongly — with unemployment back down to 6.2 percent in February from a peak of 14.7 percent in April 2020.
