This week, Vice President Kamala Harris has unveiled yet another key plank of her vision for a new way forward on the economy: driving the growth of small businesses by investing in them and making it easier for hard-working Americans to follow their dreams and start a company. It is part of her core belief that, when the middle class is strong, America is strong.
But Donald Trump does not share that view. He wants our economy to serve billionaires and big corporations. He is throwing out proposal after proposal to give them massive tax windfalls, and even promised some executives to make them richer in exchange for their campaign contributions.
This week, we continued to see a growing slate of analyses and reports that have evaluated the negative economic impact of Trump’s economic agenda for a second term, finding it would cost trillions of dollars, explode the national debt, shrink economic growth, curb job creation, drive up inflation, and raise costs for middle-class and working Americans by thousands of dollars a year.
That is the consensus of a wave of new reports by experts from veteran reporters to financial services professionals to conservative-leaning economists.
Applying different methodologies, these experts – including several who often hold opposing viewpoints – have independently determined that on a range of economic issues, Donald Trump’s plans defy fundamental economic principles, would upend the American economy, and would cost trillions, with the middle class bearing the brunt of the fallout.
- The consequences feel even more alarming knowing Trump could impose one of his most reckless plans – a middle-class tax hike opposed even by top Congressional Republicans – without Congress, as reported by Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
Just take a look:
Bloomberg, CNN, The New York Times, The Congressional Budget Office, and the Penn Wharton Budget Model: Trump’s agenda would explode the national debt by trillions of dollars.
- Bloomberg: “Republican nominee Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance are campaigning on a grab bag of tax cut proposals that could collectively cost as much as $10.5 trillion over a decade, a massive sum that would exceed the combined budgets of every domestic federal agency.”
The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, Goldman Sachs, and Moody’s: Trump’s agenda would shrink economic growth and undermine job creation.
- Tax Foundation: “We estimate the proposed tariffs would reduce long-run GDP by 0.8 percent, the capital stock by 0.6 percent, and hours worked by 685,000 full-time equivalent jobs.”
- USA Today: “According to a Moody’s study, Trump’s plan would trigger a recession by mid-2025 and an economy that grows an average 1.3% annually during his four-year term vs. 2.1%…Next year, under a Trump administration, inflation would rise…The U.S. would have 3.2 million fewer jobs and a 4.5% unemployment rate, a half percentage point higher, at the end of a Trump tenure.”
- Fortune: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists gamed out the potential economic implications of a Republican or Democratic victory in the November elections, cautioning that US GDP faces a hit in the case of a win for Donald Trump.”
Nobel laureate economists, financial services analysts, and Wall Street economists agree: Trump’s agenda will drive up inflation.
- Axios: “16 Nobel economists see a Trump inflation bomb”
- Wall Street Journal: “Economists Say Inflation Would Be Worse Under Trump Than Biden”
The conservative-leaning American Action Forum and The Center for American Progress agree: Trump’s agenda would effectively impose a national sales tax of nearly $4,000 a year for the typical middle-class household.
- American Action Forum: “Given a 10 percent tariff, U.S. households would have nearly $2,350 in additional annual costs, while adding a 60 percent tariff on China would drive costs up to $3,900.”
- CAP: “A 20 percent across-the-board import tax combined with the 60 percent tax on Chinese goods would amount to about a $3,900 tax increase for a middle-income family.”
- The Peterson Institute: “High tariffs also imply a massive shifting of the tax burden from richer taxpayers toward lower-income Americans.”
- Politico: “If elected to a second term, trade experts and former officials say [Trump] could easily use another obscure but long-standing statute to enact his latest trade proposal: slapping a universal tariff of 10 or 20 percent on all goods imported into the U.S., which currently total more than $3 trillion annually. … The law is an efficient way to skirt Congress, which has Constitutional authority over raising and lowering tariffs.”
But Donald Trump is denying this broad, bipartisan consensus, “hoping that most economic analyses of his ideas are dead wrong” and blatantly lying to the American people about the severe costs and consequences of his economic plans.
When it comes to the economy in this election, the choice could not be clearer.
Vice President Harris has a plan for a new way forward on the economy to boost the middle class, working Americans, and small businesses. She has an agenda that is responsible, funding her plans by ensuring billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share. She has an agenda to reduce Americans’ grocery, healthcare, and housing costs and other everyday expenses where most Americans just need a little help.
Trump may try to distort objective reality on his dangerous plans, but mainstream experts agree on the devastating results of his agenda: shrinking the economy, undermining job growth, driving up inflation, exploding the national debt, and raising taxes on the middle class.
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