Donald Trump, speaking with CNBC, praised himself as the “king of debt,” adding, “I love debt; I love playing with it.”
Trump pontificated, “We’re paying a very low interest rate. What happens if that interest rate goes up 2, 3, 4 points? We don’t have a country. We do need money to rebuild the infrastructure of the country.”
Just where Trump will get his money isn’t clear; his own plans should help sink the American economy. As Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, stated, “If he does what he proposes to do, in eight years the fiscal gap will be even bigger.”
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Trump’s economic plan would double the national debt, hiking it to a $28 trillion deficit by 2026, and adding $10 trillion from the spending and tax cuts he has proposed. The CRFB also stated that for Trump to balance the budget according to his plan, under Mr Trump’s proposed plan, 96% of government spending would have to be cut, which is ridiculous.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said Trump’s economic plan would double the national debt.
Trump supports huge tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and China, which would force U.S. consumers to pay higher prices. As Mark J. Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan at Flint, pointed out, “It’s a common mistake that people who don’t really understand economics make that this would somehow be a tariff on exporters. It would be actually be a tax on American consumers. And more than half of U.S. imports come in as raw materials. And those cheap imports benefit American companies that hire American workers to finish the production process. Trump is really hearkening back to the outdated mercantilist positions of hundreds of years ago.”
