Trump Taps Musk for Gov’t Efficiency Panel; Proposes America First Tax & Tariff Policies

As anticipated, Tesla tycoon Elon Musk will head a government efficiency commission to rein in fraud, waste, and abuse, former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump announced today.

Speaking at the Economic Club of New York, Trump also proposed a drastic cut in the corporate income tax rate. Corporations that manufacture products in the United States will pay 15 percent.

That America First manufacturing policy will not only reward patriotic companies, but also punish globalist corporations that fire American workers to outsource jobs overseas. They won’t get the corporate tax cut.

Otherwise, Trump used the C-word again. He called the radical-left policies of Vice President Kamala Harris “communism.”

Biden Has Wrecked the Economy

Trump opened his speech with a wide-ranging attack on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The former president rattled off the damage Bidenomics has done. “1.3 million workers have become unemployed in the past 12 months,” he said, while the “typical American family has lost $28,000 due to rampant and record-setting inflation.”

More than 30 percent of Americans report maxing out their credit cards, and families must earn about $110,000 to buy a “typical home,” he said. 

As well, “gasoline prices, grocery prices, electricity prices, mortgage rates, and virtually everything else are up 30 to 100 percent since I left office,” he continued, while 8.4 million Americans work second jobs, “the highest in more than 30 years.”

Wages for blacks and Hispanics are down. Worse still, Biden’s “migrant” invaders at the southwest border are stealing their jobs.

“No one talks about it, but I won’t let it happen,” he said.

Harris “wants four more years to enforce the radical-left agenda that poses a fundamental threat to the prosperity of every American family and America itself,” Trump said.

He called that agenda “communism” after noting that Harris has proposed open borders, banning fracking, defunding the police, abolishing private health insurance, and other crackpot policies.

“We are not going to let this happen,” Trump said:

Communism is the past, freedom is the future, and it is time to send Comrade Kamala Harris back home to California where crime is rampant and fleeing is the No. 1 occupation.

Trump to Musk: You’re Hired

In appointing Musk to run the efficiency panel, Trump noted that the X and SpaceX chieftain endorsed him for president.

“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” Trump said:

We need to do it. We can’t go on the way we are now. And Elon … has agreed to head that task force.

Trump said hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars were wasted on fraud and improper payments in 2022. The commission’s first job will be to eliminate that waste, fraud, and abuse within six months. 

“This is badly needed,” Musk wrote on X after the speech.

The America First Tax and Tariff Plan

As for his America First tax and tariff plan, Trump will expand research-and-development tax credits, and reduce the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent, but “solely for companies that make their product in America,” he said: 

You have to make your product in America. If you outsource, offshore, or replace American workers, you’re not eligible for any of these benefits. In fact, you will pay a very substantial tariff when a product comes in from another country, that’s made in another country and comes in. There’ll be a big tariff on that product because we want to make our goods in America. Most of them we can. My message is simple. Make your product here in America and only in America. We are not going to be taken advantage of anymore. …

We’re not going to watch our wealth and jobs get ripped away from us and sent to foreign countries, which is what’s been happening for many many decades.

Reich Fumes

Without doubt, leftists are furious about the Musk appointment and Trump’s America First tax and tariff policies.

Prime example: President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, Robert Reich, who wants Musk arrested for allowing free speech on the social media platform that he happens to own.

“Sure,” Reich wrote in a hate-Musk conniption. “Why not put the safety and security of our nation in the hands of the guy known for exploding cars, exploding rockets, and a collapsing social media platform. What could go wrong?”

And Reich really hates Trump’s plan for America First taxes and tariffs.

“He doesn’t actually have a plan to make childcare more affordable,” Reich raged on X:

But he does have a plan to establish across-the-board tariffs on imports that will lead to huge price hikes and hurt everyone but the very wealthy.

Reich did not, of course, explain how workers who are fired when companies offshore their jobs can buy goods from those very same companies. That aside, he is among the totalitarians who want Musk jailed. Indeed, he was one of three Guardian writers who all but demanded it.

As The New American reported of Reich’s rant, he screeched that Musk is “out of control.” He is

rapidly transforming his enormous wealth … into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.

Because Trump might appoint Musk to run the efficiency panel, Reich claimed that Musk would be a sort of co-president because the two would be “governing together if Trump wins a second term.”

But worse still, “Musk is supporting rightwing causes around the world” and supports and retweets “lies” from “instigators” who spew hate and misinformation.

Even boycotting X and Tesla isn’t enough to stop Madman Musk, wrote Reich:

Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.

H/T: The Wall Street Journal