Sarah Longwell: Unpacking the First 10 Days of the New Trump Administration

BY SUSAN LEHMAN | BIGTENTUSA

📊 Inflation Down, Spirits Up…For Now.

Good news! The Consumer Price Index (CPI) cooled in July compared to 2023, which served as evidence that inflation is moderating. This summer was the first time the inflation rate has fallen below 3% since 2021. The Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates in its September meeting. And inflation eased to 2.5% in August.

💰 The economy and the election: The economy and inflation are consistently ranked by voters as their primary concern. 

📈 What is Trump’s economic plan?

• Cut government departments (including Education, Justice).

• Repeal the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

• Appoint Elon Musk to head a new Efficiency Commission to oversee government spending (gift article.) 

• Deport 15 million immigrants in order to bring housing prices down.

• Influence (personally) the Central Bank’s monetary policy. 

• Reduce corporate tax rate to 15%. 

• Keep individual tax cuts permanent especially for top earners. 

• Eliminate taxes on tips.

• Impose a 10 to 20 percent tariff on most imports, and 60% for goods made in China. 

• Drill for oil, new pipelines and new power plants.

📊 What about the Harris economic plan?

• Raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent and long-term capital gains to 28 percent for anyone earning over $1M. 

• Provide a $50,000 tax deduction expenses for small businesses. 

• Construct 3 Million housing units.

• Create a $25,000 down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers. Ban on price gouging on food and groceries.

• Expand permanently the child tax credit to $6,000 for middle- and low-income families for the first year of their child’s life. 

• Promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year.

🫵 The bottom line?: Though Harris remains vulnerable to voters’ economic pessimism, more voters trust Harris to handle the economy than Trump, with 42% trusting Harris on economic matters as opposed to 41% trusting Trump. Harris ranks 7 percentage points higher than Biden did in July.

To most economists, Trump’s economic agenda will shrink the economy, crush job growth, raise taxes on the middle class, drive up inflation, and explode the national debt. In fact, 16 Nobel laureate economists cited warnings saying that Trump’s plans would increase inflation and debt. Moody’s agreed. In contrast, a Harris victory this November would have limited impact on the economists’ baseline inflation forecast of 2.4 percent in 2025, according to the report. Read Moody’s analysis

Goldman Sachs predicts stronger GDP and job growth if Democrats sweep White House and Congress. Penn Wharton Budget Analysis estimates that both the Trump and the Harris economic proposals would raise the deficit by $5.8 trillion and $1.2 trillion respectively.

Read more on the policies and the numbers HERE and then look over the candidates plans below. Become informed and then tell your friends what you know!