Taxes and the economy are taking center stage in the 2024 presidential campaign. (Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he would protect American industries if he is reelected by increasing tariffs on imports while cutting other taxes and regulations, in a speech to the Economic Club of New York.
The GOP presidential candidate’s remarks came as the economy has taken center stage in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Both Trump and the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have criticized a ballooning national deficit, high housing costs, and increasingly expensive groceries.
In a wide-ranging speech that also framed his hardline immigration position in economic terms and blasted Harris for what he said were the policy shortcomings of the Biden administration, Trump laid out several planks of an economic platform focused on corporate tax cuts and protectionist policies that he predicted would boost domestic manufacturing.
“Some might say it’s economic nationalism,” he said. “I call it common sense. I call it America First … We have to take care of our own nation and our industries first.”
Trump’s speech came one day after Harris delivered new proposals to cut taxes on small businesses during a speech at a brewery in New Hampshire.
While Trump would cut corporate taxes and extend the tax cut for high earners that he signed during his first term, he said he would raise tariffs, which are taxes on foreign goods. Doing so would compel U.S. companies to keep their production jobs in the country, he said.
Tariffs would also seed a new “sovereign wealth fund” that would “return a gigantic profit,” he said.
He told the economists and business professionals in the room that he would lean on them to advise on the fund, and that it would be flush with cash from tariffs on foreign imports.
The “greatest sovereign wealth fund,” he said, would also pay for infrastructure, defense capabilities, and “cutting-edge medical research,” as well as pay down the nation’s debt.
“We’ll create America’s own sovereign wealth fund to invest in great national endeavors for the benefit of all of the American people,” he said. “Why don’t we have a wealth fund? Other countries have wealth funds. We have nothing. We have nothing. We’re going to have a sovereign wealth fund or we can name it something different.”
Tax battle
Trump told the group that Harris would raise taxes, including on unrealized gains on investments before they are sold.
“Unbelievably, she will seek a tax on unrealized capital gains,” he said.
Trump would lower the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent, he said, while Harris would raise it to 28 percent.
He also said he would appoint Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X who has endorsed Trump and regularly posts about the election, to lead a government efficiency commission.
Trump would seek to make permanent the tax cuts he signed into law in 2017. Taxes have featured prominently on the campaign trail ahead of the 2025 expiration of the law that cut individual tax rates, reduced the corporate tax rate, and doubled the child tax credit.
In her remarks in New Hampshire, Harris promised to increase deductions tenfold on business start-up costs, up to $50,000 from $5,000. She also vowed to simplify the tax filing process for entrepreneurs by allowing them to claim a standard deduction, similar to what’s available for individual income taxpayers.
Harris also drew attention to her New Hampshire speech when she broke with President Joe Biden’s tax plan for capital gains, promising “a rate that rewards investment in America’s innovators, founders, and small businesses.”
Harris told the crowd that anyone earning $1 million or more would see a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains under her administration, if elected. The proposal deviates from Biden’s plan to raise revenue by taxing capital gains over $1 million at 39.6 percent. Biden also proposed a 5 percent Medicare surcharge on long-term capital gains for high earners.
The current rate for high earners is 20 percent.
A long-term capital gain tax is applied to any profit made on the sale of an asset, like stocks, bonds, or real estate, held by the owner for more than a year.
Immigration
Trump also sought to make his signature policy issue – an ultra-hardline immigration stance – an economic one.
An increasing number of migrants entering the country through the border with Mexico are taking jobs from Americans, he said, singling out Americans of color.
“Hispanic American jobs are under massive threat from the invasion taking place at our border,” Trump said. “They’re taking jobs from Hispanic Americans, African Americans.”
He added, falsely, that all jobs created during the Biden administration were filled by immigrants in the country illegally.
Trump has called for an unprecedented deportation program of undocumented immigrants and has placed the blame for record migrant crossings on Biden and Harris.
‘Like nobody’s ever grown before’
Trump promised “tremendous growth,” mostly attributing that growth to a yet unnamed percentage tariff on foreign imports. He signaled his target for tariffs will be higher than any percentage floated so far.
“We’re gonna grow like nobody’s ever grown before,” he said. “We will be bringing in billions and billions of dollars, which will reduce our deficit.”
He also suggested during the question-and-answer portion that funds raised through tariffs could help families reduce the cost of child care, but offered little detail.
But economists and critics say Trump’s major economic plans to raise tariffs and extend his signature tax cuts will put additional costs on consumers and add trillions to the deficit.
Trump’s plan to extend the 2017 tax cuts would add between $4.1 and $5.8 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model.
Rule of law
Trump said the country has suffered economically under Biden and Harris because of his legal issues.
Trump has faced four criminal prosecutions, including two federal cases related to his mishandling of classified documents following his presidency, and his conduct to provoke the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He was also convicted of New York state felonies related to an illegal hush money arrangement during his first White House campaign and is charged in Georgia with election interference related to the 2020 campaign.
He said Thursday the prosecutions were politically motivated, making investors lose faith in the country’s governance. He hinted that he would retaliate and said that he would eliminate political prosecutions.
“They always have to remember that two can play that game,” he said. “Nobody ever thought this was possible. This is how you create massive capital flight and turn once prosperous nations into absolute ruins. I will have no higher priority as president than to restore the fair, equal, and impartial rule of law in America. We have lost the rule of law.”