Donald Trump on Monday laid out his plan
to lower taxes, freeze financial regulations and trigger an energy
revival which he said would spur economic growth and “open a new chapter
in American prosperity.”
It was a broad-brush outline with some
meaty specifics, aimed in part at reviving the Republican presidential
nominee’s flagging campaign after a series of missteps in recent weeks
that sent him careening off message.
Here are highlights of the Trump economic plan.
– Lower taxes –
The lynchpin of Trump’s plan is the
slashing of various taxes on American individuals and corporations, a
proposal he said would lead to the biggest tax reform since president
Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
He would sharply reduce corporate tax to
15 percent from the current 35 percent, and set a 10 percent tax on
what he described as trillions of dollars that US businesses have “now
parked overseas” but want to repatriate into the country.
Personal income tax rates would be
compressed from seven brackets to just three, with today’s highest rate
of 39.6 percent shrinking to 33 percent.
He would also abolish the estate tax,
and said he would allow parents to “fully deduct” the cost of childcare
spending from their taxes.
– Moratorium on regulations –
Trump would immediately slap a
moratorium on all federal agency regulations that he believes are
needlessly killing jobs. He said he would “cut regulations massively.”
Already on the chopping block would be
the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which forces
investment in renewable energy at the expense of coal and natural gas,
and the Interior Department’s moratorium on coal mining permits.
He would also repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.
– Trade reform –
Trump is opposed to the proposed
Trans-Pacific Partnership backed by Obama and Republican congressional
leaders. It was signed by his administration and 11 other nations in
2015, but hit a snag in Congress.
He wants to abolish the North American
Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico that was signed into law in
1994, describing it as a pact that has “shipped your jobs to Mexico and
other countries.”
Trump reiterated his support for
strengthened protections against currency manipulation that allow other
countries to “cheat by unfairly subsidizing their goods.”
China, warned Trump, “is responsible for
nearly half of our entire trade deficit.” He said he would go after
Beijing for its “rampant” theft of intellectual property, its dumping of
Chinese products on the US market and currency manipulation.
– Energy revival –
Trump called for an “energy revolution,”
starting with cancellation of Obama’s climate plan and the Paris
Climate Agreement, and a halt of US payments to United Nations global
warming programs.
He would also expand offshore drilling,
increase natural gas production, and reverse what he called Obama’s “war
on coal” that led to the loss of thousands of energy industry jobs.
He would call on Canadian firm
TransCanada to renew its permit application for building Keystone XL,
the crude oil pipeline between Canada and US oil refineries rejected by
the Obama administration last year.
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