At Circles USA, we know that mobilizing our households, chapters, and states to participate in elections is only one phase of civic engagement. Building community to end poverty requires each of us to ask every day, year-round: How can I show up with an intentional focus on moving the needle towards our shared goals? And what can we collectively do to hold our elected officials accountable for their campaign promises to We the People?
“Ending poverty is a nonpartisan issue,” says Circles Executive Director Kamatara Johnson. “But it’s also very much a bipartisan project, in that both Democratic and Republican leaders have failed to meaningfully decrease obstacles to prosperity for the most vulnerable Americans—that is, the working poor**. History has taught us that elected officials need to be held accountable in large and small ways. Are they doing what we hired them to do? Are we seeing the needed results in our homes, schools, businesses, and government offices? And how can we act in effective ways during the months and years in-between presidential elections, so that those in offices both high and low really support people’s financial wellbeing as a cornerstone of democracy?”
In this first of a two-part series on post-election civic engagement, CUSA offers this short list of major economic positions published by the Trump campaign prior to re-election, per CBS News and other sources.
“The more familiar we are with any administration’s policy platforms,” Kamatara reminds us, “the more we can hold them to task when it comes to delivering on their promises to support us and enact our best, most promising ideas for change.”
Taxes
Trump claims he will extend tax cuts enacted in 2017, which reduced taxes for most Americans. Research shows that higher-income individuals, families, and corporations (notably Trump's own) benefited the most from tax policy enacted during his first administration.
Under Trump, “everyone” will receive a tax cut, but the lowest earners — those making under $19,600 — would just see a $320 difference in take-home pay… “The very highest earners under Trump would receive a tax break of $376,910, according to [a] Penn Wharton analysis.” [Source]
Trump…want[s] to eliminate federal taxes on tips.
Trump plans to eliminate income taxes on Social Security benefits, which may help middle- and upper-middle income seniors the most. [Source]
Child tax credit
VP-elect JD Vance has proposed raising the child tax credit to $5,000 (from the current top tax break of $2,000) for all Americans, including those in the highest tax brackets. [Source]
Inflation
“Trump has pledged to end the ‘inflation nightmare,” CBS reports. “But his policies, which include adding tariffs to all imported goods, would likely fuel inflation and reverse some of the progress of the last two years, some economists say.” [Source]
Tariffs
Another key Trump-Vance platform point likely to impact our economy is the tariff, or tax on imported goods. MSN reports: “Trump says ‘tariff’ is his favorite word in the dictionary and he is likely to try to move quickly on new trade restrictions that he promised during the campaign”:
The president-elect says he will impose between a 10 and 20 percent across-the-board tariff on all $3 trillion worth of U.S. goods imports and a 60 percent tariff on all Chinese goods. That would dramatically expand the duties he imposed during his first term on tens of billions of dollars worth of steel and aluminum and more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. [Source]
Howard Gleckman with The Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution explained in 2018 who would absorb the cost of Trump’s announc[ed] “10 percent tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese imports.”
[President-elect Trump] “showed a troubling lack of understanding about how the levies work,” Gleckman writes. “Pointing to earlier import duties he imposed, Trump bragged that ‘China is paying us billions of dollars in tariffs.’ Treasury, he added, is collecting ‘tremendous amounts of money, which is great for our country.’” But, he continues, “[d]espite what the President says, it is almost always paid directly by the importer (usually a domestic firm), and never by the exporting country. Thus, if the US imposes a tariff on Chinese televisions, the duty is paid to the US Customs and Border Protection Service at the border by a US broker representing a US importer, say, Costco.
“In the case of Trump’s tariffs on China,” he concludes, “that means US consumers will pay somewhat higher prices… Will Trump’s new tariffs generate a big boost in federal revenue?
The short answer is: No.” [Source] Consumers are likely to face similar short-term fluctuations in 2025 and beyond.
Healthcare
Daniel Payne at MSN reports: “On Obamacare, even conservative health policy analysts who’d like to repeal the Affordable Care Act say that’s not in the cards. Instead, they say Trump will focus on loosening regulations on insurers and targeting specific elements of the law for repeal or reform. Vice President-elect JD Vance wants to cut costs for healthy, younger people by allowing them to sign up for insurance based on the health risks they face. That could increase prices for older people and those with pre-existing conditions, who are shielded from risk-based pricing under Obamacare.”
“Trump supported allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices in his 2016 campaign but later backed away,” Payne continues. “Now he’s in charge of ongoing negotiations Congress mandated in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which are supposed to include dozens of new drugs during his term. Every Republican lawmaker voted against that law. Trump’s Justice Department is now tasked with defending it against pharmaceutical company challenges in court.” [Source]
Pt. 1 of this series provided an overview of President Trump’s economic policy platform for easy reference. In Pt. 2 of this series, we’ll share stories and best practices of Circles USA chapters working to hold local, state, and national elected officials accountable for fulfilling their economic promises to voters.
**An official US Department of Labor designation describing “persons who spent at least 27 weeks [in the past year] in the labor force (that is, working or looking for work), but whose incomes fell below the official poverty level."