Trump and the Economy - What Steps Should He Take?

1,610 Views | 32 Replies | Last: 1 day ago by LMCane
infinity ag
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I know what the result should be (from my perspective).

Short Term
1. Low inflation
2. Booming stock market
3. Low unemployment
4. Reasonable housing price
5. Balanced Budget

Long Term
Reduction of $35T National Debt.
Reduction of wasteful expenditure

Obviously he will pick and choose what he wants to do, it may be from outside this list. He may not agree with these items either.

What should Trump do to get us to a good economy? What hurdles does he face? Is it reasonable to expect progress?

What would you do and how, if you were advising Trump?
aggiehawg
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AG
I just remember Reagan's first term. Took nearly two years to get out of Carter economic ditch and it was painful at the time to course correct.

I actually think it won't take Trump that long but the Fed would have to keep from stabbing him in the back. And I'm not sure anyone can trust the Fed at this point.
AJCB
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AG
Open the energy market with cheaper oil and natural gas. Lower the cost of transportation of goods, lower the cost of those good on the shelf at the store. I do not need an economics degree from Boston University to figure that out.
aTmAg
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AG
Do NOT tariff the crap out of everything.

I hope like hell, that other countries fall for it, bend to his will, and then Trump never has to implement any of it. If they call his bluff then we will all find out how wrong Trump is on tariffs.
Jeeper79
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AG
Tariffs will cause inflation to go up rather than go down. Bond markets are already starting to respond in some regards in expectation of this.
BusterAg
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AG
I have a few ideas:

1) quit printing money
2) quit printing money
3) quit printing money
4) drill, baby, drill
5) Fire a crap ton of federal employees, and cut the federal budget, so you can quit printing money. Axe entire departments.
6) Significantly reduce foreign aid, so you can quit printing money
7) Sell some real estate in Utah. Not the best real-estate, but the most boring real estate that could be used for agriculture.
8) Increase the interest rate to curb inflation. Actively manage it. Unemployment will go up as the public sector gets trimmed down.
9) deport a ton of illegals.
10) Invest in more LNG terminals, so we can drill even more
11) Build a couple of nukes in the desert somewhere. Give a huge tax break on profits for the first 20 years.
12) Use the bully pulpit to bring jobs back to the US. It worked the first time, do it again.
13) Renegotiate CHIPS, and expand the silicon manufacturing in the US even more. Give tax breaks to US investors.
14) Demand tariff reciprocity, targeting manufactured goods. For every dollar foreign governments collect on US manufactured goods, we will demand $1 of tariffs from that country's manufactured goods. Important that you focus on manufacturing. It's not about expanding individual spending power, it is about expanding manufacturing employment. I know what you read in your macro books in college, and they completely gloss over frictional unemployment, like it is no big deal. It is a huge deal.
15) Remove weed from schedule I. Establish a federal excise tax on weed and all forms of THC and THC analogs. Anything that will make you fail a piss test. Make the excise tax hefty, don't be shy here. Make it illegal to transport without the tax. Limit concentrations of THC in weed related products. Regulate it not like tobacco, but like distilled ethanol. You can grow your own, and consume it where it was grown, but the tax man is going to get his once it leaves its place of origin.
16) Server farm energy consumption excise tax. Call this a carbon tax on the cost of all the A/C required to run these server farms, but it is absolutely a tax on silicon valley, AI, and crypto farmers. Crypto prices will climb.
17) War on regulations. Provide a lot more support to the SBA to encourage entrepreneurs. Feed the cash through the states. By year 2, start making the support conditional on dropping local licensing regulations. Provide federal grants to programs designed to eliminate local regulations on small businesses. Not sure how to execute this yet, but that is the idea.
18) Tax deduction every year for five years for each dollar of direct DEI costs eliminated by corporations. 5x penalty for any company that takes advantage of the tax deduction and starts doing DEI under a different name. Sick those 87,000 IRS agents on looking at those DEI deductions.
19) Expand federally guaranteed education loans to include any institutions that train skilled tradesman on high-demand jobs. Electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. Make this type of education basically free until you graduate, when you then have to pay it back, but at a low interest rate.
20) Eliminate all federal grants for any humanities degree.
21) Increase the University Endowments tax to equal capital gains tax. This would increase those taxes from 1.4% to 20%. Phase it in over 4 years.
22) Move a significant amount of the federal beaurocracy out of D.C. into cheaper places to live. Sell a lot of federal buildings in DC.
23) Sue the over loving crap out of the pharma industry for lying. Find a way to invalidate all of the waivers (if at all legally possible) due to fraud. Don't break the law here, but take very aggressive legal stances, make the litigations very public, and accept sizable settlements.
24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
25) Build the F'ing wall.
26) Eliminate all federal subsidies on unbuilt wind farms.
27) Enact a federal tax on all unbuilt wind farms relative to the weight of the unrecycled fiber glass or carbon fiber that is going to have to be landfilled.
28) Repurpose all Know Your Customer regulations to capture illegal aliens that are interacting with the financial sector. Increase penalties for financial institutions interacting with the financial sector. Eliminate all of the regulations meant to monitor domestic money transfers, and focus them on international transfers, specifically from criminals and illegal aliens.
29) Tax all windfarms for the environmental damage they cause to our wildlife. Windfarms have to pay for all of the birds that they kill at the statutory rate set by local game laws and the Migratory Bird Protection Act.
Jeeper79
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AG
TLDR
BusterAg
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AG
The point is, there are a ton of levers out there to choose from. We have done such a terrible job of over regulating and government overreach, that cutting government spending / regulation / oversite is a target rich environment.
Tom Fox
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Everyone pays the same federal income tax rate.
BusterAg
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AG
Tom Fox said:

Everyone pays the same federal income tax rate.
Que?

Not really true unless you have a flat tax, but I don't understand your point.
BoydCrowder13
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aggiehawg said:

I just remember Reagan's first term. Took nearly two years to get out of Carter economic ditch and it was painful at the time to course correct.

I actually think it won't take Trump that long but the Fed would have to keep from stabbing him in the back. And I'm not sure anyone can trust the Fed at this point.


Would you have the Fed raise or lower rates? And why?
JB99
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AG
Reduce regulation

Drill baby drill

Extend tax cuts and add some more tax cuts

91AggieLawyer
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AG
aggiehawg said:

I just remember Reagan's first term. Took nearly two years to get out of Carter economic ditch and it was painful at the time to course correct.

I actually think it won't take Trump that long but the Fed would have to keep from stabbing him in the back. And I'm not sure anyone can trust the Fed at this point.

To put this into perspective, Paul Volker was an albatross around Reagan's neck for most of his term but particularly the first two years. By '82, inflation was well below pre-Carter era rates. On the other hand, the Fed was RAISING interest rates (ostensibly to combat inflation) in early '82 and only made meaningful cuts in the fall of that year, too late to have any effect on the elections (which was likely Volker's goal). So you're right (especially about the Fed), but I would argue it was artificial. Rates were WAY too high in '82 (and late '81 for that matter) and didn't come down sufficiently until Reagan's second term. Hell, they were being raised substantially from summer of '83 for another year, well after the economy had some juice. What the fed was doing was criminal.

As much as Carter was to blame for the ditch you speak of, Volker was to blame for the slow and defective winch. Reagan probably should have taken his balanced budget case (or rhetoric if you like that better) to the American people and shut down the government until he got one. Putting all that aside, I don't think the Fed will do that now. They aren't as inflation paranoid -- as much as that was really an excuse back then.
InnerCityAg
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Step one:

Deport all of the illegals
Get Off My Lawn
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InnerCityAg said:

Step one:

Deport all of the illegals
But that would solve housing and wages and a big chunk of socialized medical welfare almost immediately!
Definitely Not A Cop
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AG
Open up insurance to compete across state and national lines

Drill baby drill

Slash regulations on building energy production facilities whether it's LNG/oil/nuclear


Work with states to reduce regulations and codes that cause healthcare and medical technology to be prohibitively expensive.
doubledog
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aTmAg said:

Do NOT tariff the crap out of everything.

I hope like hell, that other countries fall for it, bend to his will, and then Trump never has to implement any of it. If they call his bluff then we will all find out how wrong Trump is on tariffs.
Just threaten tariffs to get your trading partners to the negotiation table. 4D chess.
doubledog
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Weeding out the unproductive employees in the three letter government agencies would save a lot of money. Money that could then be applied to lower the national debt. A side benefit would be to reduce the number of stead fast democrats in the DC area, by forcing them to look for jobs elsewhere.

B-1 83
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AG
Quote:

24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
Reducing Customs, Border Patrol, ICE, etc……. doesn't seem like a good idea right now while simultaneously wanting to close the border and send 10,000,000 migrants and illegals home.
FriendlyAg
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Interest rates are so tough.

I think there are billions at risk from a real estate stand point that is directly tied to where rates move to. If they stayed where they were or were further increase, you'd see a massive correction in that market and a lot of destruction.

Maybe it's fine for all the equity to get wiped, but the banks have a major problem. Most small to medium sized banks have huge real estate exposure.

Lots of issues at play here with firms going bankrupt, consolidation of banks (not good for anyone), and destroying talent that goes to building things (construction companies, developers, equity partners that fund these, and banks that focus on real estate and development).

Thats generally not good, but it's especially not good when we are still pretty upside down with the amount of housing that we have and we seriously still need lots of infrastructure to be built.

On the other side of the coin, I don't think inflation is totally stomped out which erodes buying power for everyone.

I think it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. I think interest rates continue teeter totter back and forth as they try to balance all of these things.
ts5641
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AJCB said:

Open the energy market with cheaper oil and natural gas. Lower the cost of transportation of goods, lower the cost of those good on the shelf at the store. I do not need an economics degree from Boston University to figure that out.
This is the best place to start. We can start producing and selling a commodity we have plenty of without the dems in the way.
B-1 83
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AG
ts5641 said:

AJCB said:

Open the energy market with cheaper oil and natural gas. Lower the cost of transportation of goods, lower the cost of those good on the shelf at the store. I do not need an economics degree from Boston University to figure that out.
This is the best place to start. We can start producing and selling a commodity we have plenty of without the dems in the way.
It all starts with energy from all sources, and genuine "energy independence" should be a goal. We need more domestic sources of heavier crude and new refining capacity that doesn't need the foreign heavy feed stock.
BusterAg
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AG
Definitely Not A Cop said:

Open up insurance to compete across state and national lines
I like this one, too.

Insurance companies do it with multiple entities, one in every state, but that is unneeded red tape.
Tom Fox
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BusterAg said:

Tom Fox said:

Everyone pays the same federal income tax rate.
Que?

Not really true unless you have a flat tax, but I don't understand your point.


That is what I am saying. Flat tax or consumption tax. That should be the highest priority.

It makes every voter with a job have skin in the game and will make them focus on how we spend our tax dollars.

Currently half of the voters are completely detached from our tax and spend policy and if you look at families making under $150k they are only paying around 10% currently.

Essentially you have close to 75% of Americans households unaffected by our progressive tax policy. I doubt the tax rate would drop much below 10% even with a flat tax.
BusterAg
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AG
B-1 83 said:

Quote:

24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
Reducing Customs, Border Patrol, ICE, etc……. doesn't seem like a good idea right now while simultaneously wanting to close the border and send 10,000,000 migrants and illegals home.
The idea is to push most of this responsibility to the states, especially the work of ICE. Giving the states about $10 billion in grants and the authority to do everything ICE can do would be pretty effective, IMO.

Maybe 75% is too deep, but it is a bloated and needs to be pared back significantly. A significant amount of its budget is about giving aid to illegal aliens and people seeking asylum.
B-1 83
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AG
BusterAg said:

B-1 83 said:

Quote:

24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
Reducing Customs, Border Patrol, ICE, etc……. doesn't seem like a good idea right now while simultaneously wanting to close the border and send 10,000,000 migrants and illegals home.
The idea is to push most of this responsibility to the states, especially the work of ICE. Giving the states about $10 billion in grants and the authority to do everything ICE can do would be pretty effective, IMO.

Maybe 75% is too deep, but it is a bloated and needs to be pared back significantly. A significant amount of its budget is about giving aid to illegal aliens and people seeking asylum.
You really don't know what all ICE does do you? It's not all about chicken slaughterhouses - it's international and under cover in a big way. To top it off, the states have no business dealing with the international travel, trade, and inspection items Customs is responsible for.
Ribeye-Rare
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AG
Index capital gains to correlate with increases in the CPI.

IOW - Basis = cost x CPI(year of sale) / CPI(year of purchase)

It's pure BS that we are taxed on capital gains coming primarily (if not solely) from our government's devaluation of our currency. I'd love to say that inflation will now be 'a thing of the past', but I really don't believe that will be the case.

Sure, capital gains taxes due to currency devaluation are partially ameliorated when one dies and his/her heirs get a step up in basis, but who wants to have to hold assets until death just to achieve that?

The benefit (apart from equity) would be the more free movement of capital between assets and players, without having to screw with LIke-Kind exchanges and the like.
BusterAg
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AG
B-1 83 said:

BusterAg said:

B-1 83 said:

Quote:

24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
Reducing Customs, Border Patrol, ICE, etc……. doesn't seem like a good idea right now while simultaneously wanting to close the border and send 10,000,000 migrants and illegals home.
The idea is to push most of this responsibility to the states, especially the work of ICE. Giving the states about $10 billion in grants and the authority to do everything ICE can do would be pretty effective, IMO.

Maybe 75% is too deep, but it is a bloated and needs to be pared back significantly. A significant amount of its budget is about giving aid to illegal aliens and people seeking asylum.
You really don't know what all ICE does do you? It's not all about chicken slaughterhouses - it's international and under cover in a big way. To top it off, the states have no business dealing with the international travel, trade, and inspection items Customs is responsible for.
Ok, fine. Maybe 75% is way too steep.

Is it your position that there is not any bloat in DHS that needs to be trimmed? Just a little? A lot? A whole bunch?

Do you think that states should have no business deporting illegal aliens? I don't want states messing with customs, I get that, but you think the current situation, where states can't hold or deport illegals, is the better solution?
B-1 83
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AG
BusterAg said:

B-1 83 said:

BusterAg said:

B-1 83 said:

Quote:

24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
Reducing Customs, Border Patrol, ICE, etc……. doesn't seem like a good idea right now while simultaneously wanting to close the border and send 10,000,000 migrants and illegals home.
The idea is to push most of this responsibility to the states, especially the work of ICE. Giving the states about $10 billion in grants and the authority to do everything ICE can do would be pretty effective, IMO.

Maybe 75% is too deep, but it is a bloated and needs to be pared back significantly. A significant amount of its budget is about giving aid to illegal aliens and people seeking asylum.
You really don't know what all ICE does do you? It's not all about chicken slaughterhouses - it's international and under cover in a big way. To top it off, the states have no business dealing with the international travel, trade, and inspection items Customs is responsible for.
Ok, fine. Maybe 75% is way too steep.

Is it your position that there is not any bloat in DHS that needs to be trimmed? Just a little? A lot? A whole bunch?

Do you think that states should have no business deporting illegal aliens? I don't want states messing with customs, I get that, but you think the current situation, where states can't hold or deport illegals, is the better solution?
I cannot honestly say, but of all the departments I can think of, DHS likely is the least guilty. I'm sure there are some positions that can be thinned out (public affairs and such) but they are constantly scrambling for qualified employees. Not every agency is as bloated as it seems.

As far as a states go, arrest and detain? I'm good with that. Deport? Not so much. That weak link in the chain needs to be fixed and you're delving into federal law there. There is a healthy medium.
chris1515
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AG
Prioritize nuclear energy development. End all the solar and wind subsidies and refocus it on nuclear power.

Very unlikely to happen, but be aggressive about enforcing antitrust violations.

BusterAg
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AG
B-1 83 said:

BusterAg said:

B-1 83 said:

BusterAg said:

B-1 83 said:

Quote:

24) Reduce DHS by about 75%. Focus its mission on one thing and one thing only: preventing terrorism. Give 20% of the savings from the reduction of DHS to state and local police forces. Give them more authority to detain and deport illegals.
Reducing Customs, Border Patrol, ICE, etc……. doesn't seem like a good idea right now while simultaneously wanting to close the border and send 10,000,000 migrants and illegals home.
The idea is to push most of this responsibility to the states, especially the work of ICE. Giving the states about $10 billion in grants and the authority to do everything ICE can do would be pretty effective, IMO.

Maybe 75% is too deep, but it is a bloated and needs to be pared back significantly. A significant amount of its budget is about giving aid to illegal aliens and people seeking asylum.
You really don't know what all ICE does do you? It's not all about chicken slaughterhouses - it's international and under cover in a big way. To top it off, the states have no business dealing with the international travel, trade, and inspection items Customs is responsible for.
Ok, fine. Maybe 75% is way too steep.

Is it your position that there is not any bloat in DHS that needs to be trimmed? Just a little? A lot? A whole bunch?

Do you think that states should have no business deporting illegal aliens? I don't want states messing with customs, I get that, but you think the current situation, where states can't hold or deport illegals, is the better solution?
I cannot honestly say, but of all the departments I can think of, DHS likely is the least guilty. I'm sure there are some positions that can be thinned out (public affairs and such) but they are constantly scrambling for qualified employees. Not every agency is as bloated as it seems.

As far as a states go, arrest and detain? I'm good with that. Deport? Not so much. That weak link in the chain needs to be fixed and you're delving into federal law there. There is a healthy medium.
1) A large amount of employees in DHS are about what to do with illegal aliens that are here in the US, including how much support to give them, what aid they need, how to process asylum claims, what legal representation they need, etc. 99% of that should go away.

2) State and local officials should absolutely be able to deport illegal aliens, especially border states / counties. I see no practical reason why not. Saying it is a federal issue is just a jurisdictional pissing match. If they are here illegally any LEO with any knowledge of federal immigration law should be able to deport them. Keeping the handcuffs on local LEOs on this topic just adds unnecessary red tape. If a local police force illegally deports a U.S. citizen, then they will face legal repercussions including civil suits. Arguing against this goes against everything Trump ran on.
Deus Vult
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Tom Fox said:

Everyone pays the same federal income tax rate.


So are you proposing to cut tax rates for the rich or raise the tax rate on people who aren't rich? Because one of those two would have to happen to have everyone pay at the same tax rate.
LMCane
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cut the @#$#@ out of domestic spending.

drill baby drill

tariffs

tax cuts to onshore manufacturing
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