Republicans will coalesce around President Trump’s proposals for protectionism, tax cuts, and infrastructure reform at the national convention this week, party insiders say.
“The pitch will be a lot more of the same things that occurred over the past four years,” said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to the president.
Moore, who is also a contributor to the Washington Examiner, said that Trump and other Republicans will promise to accomplish unfulfilled goals, such as making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, enacting infrastructure spending, cutting taxes on capital gains and payrolls, and building out a 5G network that could compete with China.
Trump’s message will focus on how “he will continue to break down the regulatory state, lower taxes, and renegotiate trade deals,” Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso told the Washington Examiner.
The Trump campaign Sunday released his second-term agenda, “Fighting for You!” The Trump campaign’s new promises include cutting taxes to boost take-home pay, creating “Made in America” tax credits, making sure all critical medicines and supplies for healthcare workers are made in the United States, and ending economic reliance on China through tax credits and new restrictions.
Some conservatives say that the GOP has no clear policy agenda.
“This might be the most substance-free political convention in American history,” said Brian Riedl, an economist at the conservative Manhattan Institute.
“Trump’s focus on protectionism and nativism through trade deals and tariffs is considered a dead end by most economists and will hurt the economy in the long term. It’s not a sustainable future,” said Riedl.
Riedl said that the Republican Party had moved away from its traditional focus on decreasing the deficit, free trade, and reforming entitlement programs.
Instead, the GOP is going through an “identity crisis,” Riedl said, and the only real areas of agreement within the party are to oppose Democrats and to rally around Trump.
By and large, the Republican Party’s strategy for winning the election has focused less on their own positive agenda and much more on the dystopic future they say would ensue if the Democrats and Joe Biden came into power.
“Our entire economy, and our very way of life, are threatened by Biden’s plans to transform our nation and subjugate our communities through the blunt-force instrument of federal regulation at a level that you haven’t even seen yet,” Trump said at an event in July at the White House.
His campaign and the Republican National Committee have repeatedly attacked Biden’s tax proposals, which have been released in stages.
“The Biden-Harris ticket embraces socialist policies that would raise taxes by $4 trillion, decimate energy jobs, and ship jobs overseas,” said Farnaso.
Biden’s campaign disputes this message, maintaining that ads put out by the Trump campaign falsely claim that the former vice president’s proposals will heavily raise taxes on middle-class families. Instead, Biden’s campaign says, his tax plans will target the wealthy and corporations. Biden has said he won’t raise taxes on people making under $400,000.
