Aides for the White House and Biden campaign on Monday pushed back against reported plans among advisers of Donald Trump’s to pursue a cut to the corporate tax rate if the former president wins back the White House in 2024.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that some of Trump’s top economic advisers are eyeing a package of new tax cuts should he retake office, including plans to slash the corporate tax rate to as low as 15 percent.
Jason Miller, a senior Trump adviser, told the Post in a statement that Trump had not committed to specific numbers as part of his economic agenda, but that “he will do whatever it takes to make our Country competitive again.”
Biden aides were quick to highlight the story and contrast the proposal with his own agenda.
“Donald Trump is plotting to bring back the failed, trickle-down policies of his first term that lined the pockets of his ultra-wealthy friends and created incentives for corporations to ship American jobs overseas,” Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Biden’s reelection campaign, said in a statement. “This is the story of the Trump economy — blowing up the deficit to help out his wealthy friends at the expense of hardworking Americans and their families.”
Andrew Bates, a deputy press secretary for the Biden White House, said that while the administration does not weigh in on the 2024 campaign, the president believes “tax policies are the ultimate window into who a leader is really fighting for.”
“Through Bidenomics investments, President Biden is pushing every day to grow the American middle class, cut costs for families, and slash our deficits,” Bates said in a statement. “But another wave of deficit-increasing tax welfare for big corporations — especially one directly tied to unprecedented price increases on American families — would turn back the clock to the trickledown economics that hollowed out the American middle class and added trillions to the national debt.”
Bates blamed the 2017 tax law passed by congressional Republicans and signed by Trump for increasing the national deficit and failing to boost jobs or wages for working families.
“And unlike President Biden’s policies that are revitalizing American manufacturing, it did next to nothing to help America win the manufacturing industries of the future,” Bates added.
Any corporate tax cut would require the approval of Congress.
The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and lowered individual tax rates as well. The individual tax cuts expire in 2025.
Biden earlier this year proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent as part of a way to pay for his domestic agenda, though such a suggestion was dead on arrival with Congress, with even some Democrats wary of the idea.
Biden has also pushed on the international level for a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent, with aides arguing it would prevent U.S. companies from becoming less competitive if lawmakers raise the U.S. corporate tax rate.
Monday was the latest instance of Biden allies seizing on an economic idea put forward by Trump, who is the front-runner in the GOP presidential primary, putting him on track for a potential rematch with Biden in the 2024 White House campaign.
The White House last month swiped at a Trump proposal to impose a 10 percent tariff on foreign imports into the United States, warning it would lead to higher prices.