Hi all. I hope you've had a splendid weekend.
Cast your eyes on my latest article: an homage to President Trump's economic stewardship, and a plea for Republicans to support his efforts at tax reform. The economy is really humming along, but we can do better, if only we get on board with the President's economic agenda. Email, call, or pester your Congressman and Senators in person, if necessary. Let's not miss this golden opportunity to Make the I.R.S. Great Again (so to speak)!
Trump's Three Percent Solution
On
August 30th
the Commerce Department revised its estimate of economic growth in
the second quarter – to an annualized rate of 3%. Economic growth
has thus already hit a threshold promised by President Trump, but
scoffed at by leftist economists and politicians, who assumed that
Obama-era growth of around 2% was surely the best that America (a
tired husk of a nation, in their eyes) could achieve. There is
reason to believe, moreover, that the best is yet to come.
The “Trump
bump” to economic growth and to the stock market has been
pronounced – the S&P 500 is up about 15% since November 2016 –
despite the fact that much of the Trump agenda has been stalled in
Congress. Obamacare taxes and regulations have weighed on the
nation's economy since 2010, and, thanks to John McCain's
cantankerousness, the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare was
narrowly defeated in July – for now. Neither has President Trump's
promised $1 trillion infrastructure plan made any headway in
Congress. True, Trump has appointed pro-growth, conservative judges
to our nation's courts, and he has used his executive authority to
fight over-regulation, but the real world effects of these steps are,
so far, modest. This makes it all the more incredible that economic
growth, job growth, and stock market appreciation have been so
robust. It begs the question: why?
If
there is one signal blessing that Donald Trump has bestowed on the
U.S. economy, it is this: investors, business people, workers, and
consumers now know, with absolute certainty that, whatever may happen
in the months and years to come in terms of tax policy,
infrastructure spending, budget cuts, or fiscal reforms, Hillary
Clinton will not
be at the helm. Thus, her version of crony capitalism, which would
have gleefully embraced records levels of regulation, bureaucracy,
and taxation in an attempt to manhandle America into state-managed
prosperity, is now just the stuff of nightmares. Trump, therefore,
has stopped the slide into torpid socialism that President Obama
began. In this sense, Trump's economic achievements so far have been
based more on what he hasn't done than on what he has. They have
been based on Wall Street and Main Street's collective sigh of
relief, now that the pall of Democratic economic mismanagement has
been lifted.
Imagine, then,
the scale of growth and opportunity that the U.S. could attain if,
instead of merely allowing President Trump to tinker at the edges of
economic policy, we allowed him and his capable team to heal some of
the festering wounds that have beset our economy for years, if not
decades. How many inefficiencies and how much waste could be
eliminated in our health care system, if common sense reforms were
finally undertaken, and real competition were introduced – how many
new resources would thus be freed up to provide better health care to
greater numbers of Americans? How many businesses would flourish, if
modern infrastructure allowed them to communicate and transport their
goods as efficiently as possible? How many Americans, whose jobs
have been lost to countries like China and Mexico, might see their
fortunes restored by a trade policy that insisted on renegotiating
trade deals in U.S. interests, punishing companies that outsource
jobs, while rewarding those that are loyal to America and to the
American worker? These are all goals that President Trump could
achieve, with the support of Congress and the American people.
As
President Trump suggested in his recent speech in Missouri, a good
starting point is tax reform. Perhaps nothing would jump-start
economic growth more than reforming our broken system of federal
taxation, often regarded as the most needlessly complicated in the
world. President Trump has set four worthy goals for Congressmen and
Senators drafting a tax plan: tax simplification and the elimination
of loopholes; reducing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%;
cutting middle class taxes; and encouraging corporations to
repatriate the trillions of dollars in wealth that they are hiding
overseas. The details will undoubtedly be the subject of much
hand-wringing and tough negotiating, but, broadly speaking, President
Trump's goals are shared by many Republicans and
Democrats (if the latter are brave and honest enough to buck their
obstructionist base). Thus, for the sake of our nation, we must
make tax reform a
reality.
Much as the media
likes to focus on the Trump administration's real and imagined
missteps, the booming economy is a sign that the vast potential of
America is gradually being unleashed by President Trump. Already, he
is Making America Wealthy Again. With just a little help from
Congress and the people, he could truly make our economy soar.
3% growth, even
4% growth – nothing is impossible, in a country as dynamic as ours.
Together, we can leave Obama's anemic growth rates in the dust.
Dr. Nicholas L.
Waddy, an Associate Professor of History in the State University of
New York, blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
