Republicans like to claim they stand for “no new taxes.” But during campaign season, they parade their ingenious plans for moving the tax burden from here to there. A hike for all of us, but an even bigger discount for them, and they call it a tax “cut.” Donald J. Trump is planning trillions of dollars in budget-busting tax giveaways to corporations and to rich guys like himself, but he wants massive new taxes on workers and retirees.
Yes, Trump wants to tax retirees when they try to spend their hard-earned, meager savings. He plans to tax your next trip to the store. Trump said it very clearly during the first debate.
Let me give you the example of Mexico. They have a VAT tax. We're on a different system. When we sell into Mexico, there's a tax. When they sell in -- automatic, 16 percent, approximately. When they sell into us, there's no tax. It's a defective agreement.
In Trump’s mind, trade deals that lowered taxes on consumer goods need to be discarded, and replaced with steep taxes on the things people buy. As he stated:
… if you think you're going to make [consumer goods] and bring them into our country without a tax, you're wrong.
The jobs people get these days have changed their nature because the repetitive motion factory jobs of old are increasingly automated. Check out this gallery of 18 Gorgeous Images of Job-Stealing Factory Robots. Setting up a new national sales tax won’t turn robot arm spot-welders back into vintage 1950 human heads of households. The main things tariffs will do now is siphon money away from those who are working hard in the new economy, and who spend most of what we make, and who have been keeping the economy going.
For Trump, developer and landlord, there’s a life-time exemption from income tax, to be followed by not one penny in estate tax when he dies. He plans to build a wall around his money. For the rest of us, money that was taxed when we earned it will be taxed again when we spend it. And that’s not a good deal for us.