A new study found that Donald Trump’s economic plan would raise taxes on poor and middle-class Americans by $1,700 per person every year.
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A study of Trump’s tariff plan by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found it:
Presidential candidate Donald Trump proposes to reduce America’s dependence on income taxes while increasing our dependence on tariffs. He is proposing to extend expiring tax cuts from 2017 and has also suggested possible new rounds of tax cuts. At the same time, he has proposed an “across the board” tariff of 10 percent and a tariff of 60 percent or more on imports from China.
Together, these policy steps would amount to regressive tax cuts, only partially paid for by regressive tax increases. The rates would reduce after-tax incomes by 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution and would cost an average household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 annually in increased taxes. If implemented, these steps would increase the disruptions and burdens caused by the rounds of tariffs imposed during the first Trump administration (and maintained during the Biden administration), while inflicting enormous collateral damage on the U.S. economy.
Trump consistently claims that his tariff plan would not hurt the economy because he disrupts the way tariffs work. Trump claims that the nation on whom the tariffs are imposed bears the costs, when the reality is that tariffs raise prices for American consumers.
If Trump were to win the election and implement his tariff plan, it would increase the tax burden on poor and middle-class families. The ten percent tax would not be paid by China, but by American consumers. At a time when inflation is a lingering problem, Trump has put forward a plan that would push the US economy into recession.
Someone has to pay for Trump’s planned massive tax cut for the rich, and it will be the poor and middle class who will be left with the bill.
