Vice President Kamala Harris Reveals New Economic Plan To Rollback Signature Trump Achievement

On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris revealed another pillar of her economic policy agenda that included rolling back a signature achievement of President Donald Trump's first administration: the 2017 tax bill. Harris wants to make major changes to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, set to expire in 2025, by reverting the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. The 2017 legislation lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.

According to Harris campaign spokesman James Singer, the Democratic presidential candidate's plan would be "a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share. As President, Kamala Harris will focus on creating an opportunity economy for the middle class that advances their economic security, stability, and dignity."

The legislation would significantly change the business environment in the United States while forcing companies to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in additional taxes. Harris, who campaigned in the 2020 Democratic primary to raise the corporate tax rate back to pre-2017 levels of 35 percent, would likely need Congress's support to enact her plan if she were to win the White House in November. 

The Harris campaign's announcement comes after it received considerable backlash for a proposal released last week to address alleged "corporate price gouging." Economists and analysts critical of the plan condemned it as a "price control" policy that resembled the ideas that led to empty shelves and a black market in authoritarian countries like Venezuela or the Soviet Union. Despite the critics, Harris has stood by her economic policy and continues to put out new proposals.

Vice President Harris' plan to butcher the 2017 tax bill would likely tremendously impact economic growth, something that Trump pointed out earlier this month. President Trump explained during a recent press conference that Democrats would be under "tremendous pressure" to renew the expiring tax cuts in 2025 because "if the Democrats don't renew them or make it impossible to renew," then they would be responsible for "destroy[ing] the economy."

The 45th president explained that he wanted to cut taxes even further in the second term and that he would attempt to use tariffs to bring in revenue for the government while lowering taxes on Americans and their businesses. "[Biden] wants to let our tax cuts expire!" Trump said earlier in the year when Biden was still in the race. "Instead of a Biden tax hike, I'll give you a Trump middle-class, upper-class, lower-class, business-class — big tax cut. You're going to have the biggest tax cut."

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