Donald Trump is the Republican to beat in the polls, yet most Americans don’t know where he stands on the key economic issues.
Visiting Trump’s official campaign website isn’t much help. It vows to “Make America Great Again!” but it doesn’t say how.
Lately, his campaign speeches have focused on immigration reform — “Take the bad ones and get them the hell out.” — and bashing Washington’s lobbying culture — “I’m not using the lobbyists. I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.”
But the economy is still the top election issue by far — 44% of Americans say it’s their No. 1 concern. Trump wants to be the “jobs president.” In his speech declaring his candidacy for president, he proclaimed, “I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
The big question is: how?
More so than other candidates, looking at Trump’s past only adds to the confusion. He’s been a Democrat, an Independent, a Republican and even, briefly, toyed with being a Reform Party candidate in 1999. Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper last week, he hasn’t flip flopped, he’s “evolved” his views.
Here’s what we know for now about his “evolved” economic policies.
1. Massive tariffs on China and Mexico. Trump’s big claim is that he will bring back American jobs — “from China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so many places.”
If you listen closely, Trump has proposed doing this two ways: slapping tariffs on foreign goods and negotiating better trade deals. In his campaign announcement speech, he threatened a 35% tax on Ford vehicles made in Mexico that are brought back to the U.S. to be sold, and in 2011, he has made headlines for suggesting a 25% tariff on goods coming from China to the U.S.
At face value, what Trump has proposed would start an immediate trade war that would likely hurt American jobs and exports.
But Trump likes to play both sides on trade. He says he is against the Obama administration’s current Trans-Pacific Partnership — known as TPP — but he also espouses, “I am a free trader.” In his mind, the problem is that China has better negotiators than the U.S. (even though China is not a part of TPP).
2. Keep the minimum wage … but don’t increase it. Trump is one of the few Republicans in the 2016 field who isn’t skeptical of the usefulness of a federal minimum wage, but he doesn’t think it should be increased from the current rate of $7.25 an hour.
Wages are a hot issue for many Americans. While the country has been adding jobs in the recovery, wages have barely moved. Trump argues that raising the minimum wage would make U.S. employees less competitive with foreign workers and thus make it harder to keep jobs in America.
In 2013, Trump floated the idea of two different minimum wages — one for teenagers and one for adults with families.
The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research body of Congress, has said that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would likely cost half a million jobs, but it would also lift nearly a million Americans out of poverty.
3. For a ‘wealth tax’ … but also big tax cuts. This is the big question mark. He’s been all over the place on taxes. Back in 1999, he said he wanted to enact a 14.25% one-time tax on the wealthy (those making over $10 million) to help pay off the debt.
More recently, in 2011, he criticized Obama more not wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts, including for those earning over $250,000.
He hasn’t said much about taxes so far in this campaign. In his 2011 book, “Time to Get Tough,” he outlined a number of changes including eliminating the estate tax, ending the corporate income tax and lowering taxes on capital gains. He also suggested cutting income taxes for all Americans. His proposed top rate would be 15% (it’s currently about 40%).
The idea sounds good, except that tax experts say it would add heavily to the federal debt. Trump has already bashed Washington policymakers for running up too much debt, so how he would avoid that remains to be seen.
4. Get Wall Street pros to run the economy. Trump says he knows all the smart businessmen who should be running things in Washington. People like billionaire hedge fund manager Carl Icahn.
“I’d love to bring my friend Carl Icahn,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in mid-June. Trump also mentioned private equity titan Henry Kravis and former GE CEO Jack Welch as top Treasury Secretary candidates.
5. Repeal Obamacare. In June, Trump called the Affordable Care Act a disaster and insisted that the worst of it won’t be felt until 2016.
Aside from any difficulties getting the necessary votes in Congress to repeal the law, ending the Affordable Care Act could be costly.
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the cost of repealing the taxes levied by Obamacare, and the cost controls imposed by the law, would by themselves increase the deficit by $353 billion between 2016 to 2025.
Businesses have also adjusted to Obamacare, especially after the Supreme Court again rejected a challenge to the law. Trump has yet to spell out how he would replace the Affordable Care Act. In the past, Trump has supported finding ways to extend health care to the poor.
He reiterated that again in an appearance on “Morning Joe” in July: “You can’t let the people in this country, the people without the money and resources, to go without health care.”