President Donald Trump didn’t mention tax cuts during his inaugural address despite spending months on the campaign trail talking about first-term legislative achievement: the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
That law set tax rates that are set to expire at the end of 2025 and are likely to be a dominate topic in both U.S. legislative chambers.
Trump also didn’t directly mention tax cuts in his first post on the official White House website. Instead, in the first set of priorities published Monday, Trump said all federal agencies will take emergency measures to reduce the cost of living for Americans. It also noted that “America will no longer be beholden to foreign organizations for our national tax policy, which punishes American businesses.”
And it said Trump “will announce the America First Trade Policy,” but didn’t indicate when that might happen.
In the inaugural address, Trump did mention shifting taxes away from Americans and raising tariffs to shift the burden of taxation.
“I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families,” the 47th president said during his speech. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
Extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act won’t cover the cost of revenue loss and could add more to the federal debt.
Data from the Congressional Budget Office shows that economic activity may not cover “any of the revenue loss and that TCJA extension might add more to the debt on a dynamic basis, particularly over the long run, than under conventional scoring,” according to the Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit that tracks federal spending.
Trump previously said he wants to extend provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated will cost about $4 trillion over the next decade.
The 2017 law lowered taxes for many Americans and businesses, but it is set to sunset at the end of 2025 without action from Congress.
