Trump said he’d lower prices, instead he’s doing corporate tax giveaways

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. | Evan Vucci/AP

President Trump is back in office, and his Republican allies in Congress are already hard at work readying his legislative agenda.

Trump campaigned on a promise to lower costs for Americans. But so far, the GOP hasn’t proposed a single plan to do that. Instead, Republicans are sitting back while the president trashes the constitution, and laying the groundwork, by means of illegal cuts, for a round of massive tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and corporations.

It’s shaping up to be far worse than what Trump did the first time around, in 2017.

Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail in 2016, too—and quickly broke most of them. But he did fulfill one: His 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, his only signature legislative accomplishment, was a field day for the oligarchs and CEOs who helped elect him. This time, going beyond what he did in 2017, he has plunged the country into a constitutional crisis as he makes available money for another huge tax cut for the rich.

The tax cuts he enacted in 2017 were, of course, bad enough. The tax cut for the richest 0.1 percent of Americans was 277 times larger than the one teachers and firefighters got, nearly doubling billionaire wealth in this country and spiking inequality.

Meanwhile, corporations got a 40% discount on their taxes, which they used to send record stock buybacks to their wealthy shareholders and pad their profits while they overcharged consumers on everything from gas to groceries.

The bill never delivered the wage gains or economic growth Trump promised. But it did add $1.9 trillion to the deficit.

Key provisions of this tax scam expire next year. That would be welcome news for the vast majority of Americans, who are sick and tired of tax cuts for the wealthy. But Trump and his Republican colleagues are readying a supersized set of high-end tax breaks that would make his 2017 legislation look like child’s play.

Republicans plan to give the richest Americans a fresh round of individual tax breaks, slash the corporate tax rate yet again, and cut taxes on capital gains and dividends, which would let their Wall Street friends keep even more of their winnings when they sell a stock or are showered with dividends. Step one is what he did yesterday, illegally freezing federal funding of almost everything that Congress has made into law.

GOP leaders will point to falling revenues from their own tax cuts as evidence for the need to cut spending on life-saving programs that families rely on, like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which helps more than 42 million families afford their groceries. Trump shocked the nation, if that is any longer possible for even him to do, by freezing federal spending yesterday. The Medicaid and Veterans Benefits portals went dead. Firestorms of protest erupted across the nation.

In fact, Trump has put an unelected and unaccountable billionaire—Elon Musk—in charge of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) to decide on even more painful cuts we’ll have to face. And surprise, surprise, as we saw yesterday, they’re almost exclusively targeting programs that help working people, veterans, students, families, and other non-billionaires.

If Trump and the GOP get their way, we know exactly what to expect: Income inequality will worsen, crucial government programs will be starved, and corporations and the ultra-wealthy will amass even more outsized power over our economy and democracy.

But we can learn something else from our experiences with Trump: Masses of people united in their opposition to Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, pushing Trump’s approval rating to the lowest point in his presidency and ousting supporters of his corporate tax cuts in the next year’s midterms.

Tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations were deeply unpopular with voters in 2018—and that’s only intensified after this recent wave of corporate price gouging that has squeezed American families. Democratic lawmakers must make it as difficult as possible to enact this next tax giveaway.

This year, we need to make sure every single member of Congress understands that supporting Trump’s tax plans means turning their backs on working Americans.

Institute for Policy Studies / OtherWords

As with all op-ed articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Lindsay Owens

Lindsay Owens, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of Groundwork Collaborative. Owens has deep expertise in economic inequality, poverty, housing policy, and labor markets. In addition to serving as a senior economic policy adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Owens worked as deputy chief of staff and legislative director to Congressman Keith Ellison and Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. Lindsay Owens, Ph.D., es la directora ejecutiva de Groundwork Collaborative. Owens tiene una gran experiencia en desigualdad económica, pobreza, política de vivienda y mercados laborales. Además de servir como asesor principal de política económica de la senadora Elizabeth Warren, Owens trabajó como subjefe de personal y director legislativo del congresista Keith Ellison y la presidenta del Caucus Progresista Pramila Jayapal.