{"id":1509071,"date":"2024-12-20T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1509071"},"modified":"2024-12-20T18:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T23:00:00","slug":"trumps-economic-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/trumps-economic-plans\/1509071\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Economic Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump’s Economic Plans<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Trump will begin his first 100 days with an emphasis on his economic plans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

His core economic team is already announced including Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Jamieson Greer as U.S. Trade Representative, Kevin Hassett as Director of the National Economic Council, Scott Bessent as U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce.<\/p>\n

Hassett and Bessent will form the core of this team with Greer taking the lead on tariffs and Vought taking the lead on budget deficits and fiscal policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s economic policy will be built around what are called the Three Arrows. That\u2019s a name adopted by the new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He took the name from the Three Arrows policy of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who announced them in 2012.<\/p>\n

Abe\u2019s arrows were monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms to make Japan more competitive. Bessent\u2019s arrows are different, but the basic idea of using government to help grow the economy in productive ways is the same.<\/p>\n

Bessent\u2019s plan is also called the \u201c3\u20133\u20133\u201d plan for reasons that are made clear below.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Growth at 3%+<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Bessent\u2019s first arrow is to achieve 3% annual real growth in the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n

This may not sound like much, but it is. From 2009 to 2019 (basically the period from the end of the last financial crisis to the beginning of COVID), the U.S. grew at a rate of only 2.2% per year. Economists estimate that the potential growth of a mature developed economy such as the U.S. is about 3.2%.<\/p>\n

That gap between 3.2% potential growth and 2.2% actual growth means trillions of dollars of lost wealth over time. From 1983 to 1986 during the Reagan years, the economy actually did grow at just over 5% per year.<\/p>\n

Real growth during that three-year stretch was 16%. (Although this followed the severe recession of 1981-1982. Growth higher than potential is possible when labor and industrial slack from a prior recession is available). So, Bessent\u2019s goal of 3% real growth is realistic given potential performance, past performance, and recent lagging growth.<\/p>\n

The emphasis here is on \u201creal\u201d growth. <\/strong>This means growth without taking into account any inflation. If real growth is 3% and inflation is 2%, then nominal growth will be 5% (3% real + 2% inflation = 5% nominal).<\/p>\n

Everyday Americans are properly focused on real growth because they don\u2019t want to see their wage gains eaten up by inflation. Still, nominal growth is important when considering debt service since debt is nominal \u2014 you owe what you owe whether the real value is preserved or not.<\/p>\n

Deficits Below 3% of GDP<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Bessent\u2019s second arrow is to keep annual deficits below 3% of GDP. When discussing debt, we are dealing with nominal amounts rather than real amounts. For example, if U.S. GDP is projected at $28 trillion for a given fiscal year, then the deficit for that year cannot exceed $840 billion under Bessent\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

Note that this does not involve \u201cpaying off the national debt\u201d or even running a small surplus. <\/strong>A deficit of $840 billion is huge. But the limitation of 3% of GDP is highly significant in terms of making the debt sustainable and maintaining confidence in the U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury securities.<\/p>\n

Before deciding that this is an easy target, it\u2019s helpful to know that the U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2024 is $1.83 trillion. The deficit in fiscal year 2023 was $1.69 trillion. In short, Bessent\u2019s goal of an $840 billion deficit represents a 54% reduction in the deficit from 2024 levels and a 50% reduction from 2023 levels. That\u2019s a huge reduction in the deficit in one fiscal year.<\/p>\n

Not all of this deficit reduction would have to come from spending cuts, although some of it could, especially if Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy identify enough government waste through their new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It\u2019s likely that Musk and Ramaswamy will easily identify wasteful spending. The hard part is getting it to stop.<\/p>\n

The other way to cut the deficit is to grow the economy in such a way that government revenues grow with it. This does not mean tax rate increases. It does mean tax revenue increases from current or even reduced tax rates.<\/p>\n

One ace-in-the-hole for Trump and Bessent will be tariffs.<\/strong> Those are not part of the Internal Revenue Code, but they do generate government revenues. The U.S. began tariffs in 1790, but the Internal Revenue Code did not come into being until 1913.<\/p>\n

For 123 years, the U.S. government-funded itself mostly with tariffs, excise taxes, and borrowing without the benefit of income taxes. The U.S. currently imports over $3.5 trillion of goods per year. If only half were subject to tariffs of 10%, that would generate $175 billion of new revenue, which goes a long way to reaching Bessent\u2019s deficit reduction goals.<\/p>\n

Now the genius of the Three Arrows plan becomes clear. If nominal GDP growth is 5% (3% real + 2% inflation), and nominal deficits are kept to 3% of GDP, that means nominal growth is higher than the nominal deficit and the debt-to-GDP ratio is declining. That\u2019s the key to sustainability.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 12\/20\/2024 – 13:00<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/trumps-economic-plans<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump’s Economic Plans Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com, Trump will begin his first 100 days with an emphasis on his economic plans. His core…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1509072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1509071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-6kzR","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2024\/12\/dr-hero-img-12-18-24-shutterstoc-xyvMBs.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1509072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}