Donald Trump promised the biggest "tax revolution" since Ronald Reagan on Monday, pledging to cut taxes across the board and sharply reduce the load on business to stem the tide of US companies moving headquarters overseas.
In the most detailed account of his economic plans should he become president, the Republican nominee promised no US business would pay more than 15 per cent of its profits in tax, down from the current maximum of 35 per cent. He also pledged to levy a one-off 10 per cent tax on trillions of dollars in corporate profits now parked overseas in a bid to lure them home.
The cuts, he made clear, ware aimed at overseas tax competition from countries such as Ireland and the UK.
"We are ready to show the world that America is back – bigger and better and stronger than ever before," Mr Trump said in a Detroit speech repeatedly interrupted by protesters.
Mr Trump’s remarks included several pro-business policy initiatives long embraced by market-oriented Republicans, came after a tumultuous week that saw a number of mainstream party members seek to distance themselves from the nominee.
Party leaders have fretted that Mr Trump’s mis-steps, including toying with not endorsing Republican luminaries in re-election bids, has put internecine warfare at the forefront of the campaign, distracting attention from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses.
Targeting Clinton
Mr Trump attempted to refocus his firepower on Mrs Clinton by insisting that her economic policies would lead to higher taxes and stifling regulations.
“If you were foreign power looking to weaken America you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda,” he said. “Every policy she has tilts the playing field to other countries at our expense.”
Mrs Clinton, due to make her own economic address on Thursday, has offered a plan that would largely continue current policies, though like Mr Trump she takes a harder line on trade.
Mr Trump’s move to lower business taxes would end the “job-killing corporate inversions and cause trillions in new dollars and wealth to come pouring into our country”, he said.
Separately, a little-known former CIA operative is launching a third-party bid for president as a conservative alternative to Mr Trump.
The run by Evan McMullin comes as a faction of Republicans remain reticent to embrace Mr Trump as the party’s presidential nominee.
Mr McMullin, who until recently was employed as the chief policy director of the House Republican Conference, told ABC News there was still time to mount a campaign that could prove to be a spoiler in certain GOP-leaning states where Mr Trump has lost ground in recent polls.
There was further disruption to Mr Trump’s campaign when 50 of the most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for president George W Bush, signed a letter declaring that Donald Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and wellbeing”.
Mr Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history”.
The Financial Times/Guardian/New York Times
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