By Dan Hart, The Washington Stand
With at least one outlet calling the U.S. House for Republicans on Monday — which all but ensures a governing trifecta — President-elect Donald Trump and the GOP are set to enact a slate of policy priorities in the first 100 days of the new administration, including extending tax cuts, funding the completion of the southern border wall, and cutting regulations to expand the production of domestic oil and gas.
According to one Republican congressional aide, “The primary focus is simply on extending the Trump tax cuts and ensuring that we are on track to deliver on these campaign promises.” This could involve a further lowering of the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, removing taxes on Social Security income and tips earnings, and adding a deduction on state and local income taxes that was left out of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
In order to pay for the tax cuts, Trump has proposed a 20% universal tariff on foreign-produced goods, with an added tariff of up to 60% for goods produced in China. Economists have mixed views on how beneficial tariffs will be for the economy. Some say they will create higher costs for consumers and businesses in the long-term and run the risk of other countries retaliating with their own tariffs, which could be detrimental for U.S. exporters. But experts such as Alex Muresianu, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, say that universal tariffs between 10% and 20% could raise as much as $3 trillion over a 10-year span.
Still, a recent report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projected that Trump’s extended tax cut plan could create $7.5 trillion in additional debt over the next decade. This figure was disputed by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) over the weekend, who said that the report “doesn’t take into effect the impact of lower tax rates and economic growth as a result.”
As for the incomplete wall along the southern border, the GOP is pledging to finish the job that President Trump started and President Joe Biden refused to complete. Last week, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) stated that planned legislation could include funding to continue the wall’s construction, with construction in Arizona being the priority, sources told Reuters Tuesday.
Another high priority for the administration will be cutting red tape in the U.S. energy sector to increase production.
“The U.S. oil and gas industry [can] shake off oppressive regulation and start getting back to the business of producing oil based off supply and demand expectations, not making decisions trying to get guess what the next regulation is going to be,” Phil Flynn, an energy strategist at The PRICE Futures Group, told The Epoch Times.
Flynn further estimated that under the incoming Trump administration, the U.S. is likely to produce an extra one to two million barrels of oil per day. In addition, Rob Thummel, the senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital Advisors, projects that natural gas production will increase by 30 billion cubic feet per day by 2030.
The Biden-Harris administration has enacted a series of policies that have hamstrung the energy sector. In April, the administration increased the lease bond drillers must pay to operate on federal land from $10,000 to $150,000. This followed Biden’s restriction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, which a federal judge overturned in July. Thummel stated that the incoming Trump administration “would immediately reinstate approvals of LNG projects.”
In addition, leases for energy companies to operate on federal land will likely increase dramatically. During the Biden-Harris administration’s first three years, they issued 1,400 leases. In comparison, the first three years of Trump’s first term saw over 4,000 leases issued.
As to the green energy policies of the incoming administration, experts say Trump will likely slow lucrative subsidies that were a primary focus of the Biden-Harris administration but is unlikely to attempt a complete halt. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has suggested that not all subsidies will go away. “You’ve got to use a scalpel and not a sledgehammer, because there’s a few provisions in there that have helped overall,” he stated in September.
Energy experts believe that an “all of the above” approach will be most likely to both bring energy prices down and fortify U.S. dominance in the global energy sector. “A Trump administration has to be promoting all the above energy forms, because the only thing that really digs out of the economic issues that we’re facing with the debt burden that we have is something of an energy miracle,” Neil Winward, CEO of Dakota Ridge Capital, told The Epoch Times.
In a comment to The Washington Times, a Republican source summed up the mindset that the GOP will have on day one of Trump’s term, “We are hitting the ground running.”
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand. washingtonstand.com