September 5th, 2024
Trump delivers rambling attack speech to NY Financial Industry Group which includes some Economic Policies. A Trump Administration would focus on lowering energy prices.
Summary
Trump delivered an unfocused, disorganized, and off-topic one-hour speech to the Economic Club of New York on September 5th, 2024. Nothing new. The speech was supposed to detail his general economic plan called “Economic Nationalism” or “America First.” The audience was financial executives who would benefit greatly from Trump’s economic programs. But the response was lukewarm. They did applaud at the end but maybe because it was over.
There are four big takeaways from the speech: Trump has little understanding of the complex US economy, second, even a friendly audience of financial professionals has doubts about his economic leadership, third, his entire economic policy is based on cheap energy, and fourth, he cannot handle a simple question about child care.
The whole speech poses a really interesting question for the country: The elite financial professional in the audience will make money regardless of who wins. However, Trump’s policies will benefit them more than VP Kamala Harris’s policies. But are they willing to set aside a small amount of individual success for the greater good of the country? We bet that they will look the other way, like many others.
The Speech
The strange thing about the speech was the opening ten minutes. He opened with a broad attack on the performance of the US economy (which has been great compared to other economies). And he blamed Biden. Then he switched to attacking “Communist Kamala.” The audience was a little confused about Trump’s attack on the US economy, considering how well they have done over the past 20 years. They continued to listen as he discussed immigration. He continued for more than 25 minutes before the audience finally applauded. Trump finally switched back to economic topics and they finally responded.
Toward the end, after veering off to cover Putin, Venezuela, and nuclear weapons (“I got a bigger red button”), he returned to economic policy. He stated that growth, funded by cheap energy, and tariffs would handle any problem with the deficit.
The speech was prompted as a major address about national economic policies. Instead, it was a superficial overview of his broad economic themes. The speech was missing economic details and contained no specific or complex programs. He was asked if the new programs would add to the deficit. He brushed aside the question, saying that growth will reduce the deficit.
He, also, ignored an excellent question on child care. Instead of answering the direct question, he said “childcare is childcare,” and then rambled off-topic suggesting that the issue was so small, it would be handled by revenue from tariffs and growth.
Trump’s Economic Policy
In the hour speech, between digressions, Trump superficially discussed approximately ten economic policies he supports including: Tariffs on China, reduced immigration, expanded oil and gas production, tax cuts, reduced regulations and US manufacturing. He also covered making the US the bitcoin capital and exempting tips from taxes. He said he would bring gasoline to below $2.00 a gallon.
But, then he quickly got side-tracked to related topics such as Putin “endorsing” Kamala, nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, crime in Venezuela, immigrants taking Black and Hispanic Jobs, how he would kill the green new deal, EVs and more R&D tax cuts for business.
Cheap Energy
The one realistic policy that stood out was Trump’s idea of promoting growth through cheap energy and energy production. It would drive growth in the US economy by lowering the cost of energy. Cheap energy would also lower inflation and support US manufacturing. There was no discussion of global warming.
Cheap energy could create growth but at a huge cost to the environment.
He also proposed: reducing immigration, cutting the corporate tax rate to 15% and imposing tariffs on China.
He also supports one small, but headline grabbing proposal, to no-longer tax tips. However, Trump’s version of tips includes million dollar bonuses to corporate executives. The rest of the proposals were poll-tested, standard Republican policies such as reducing regulations and extending his tax cuts from 2017 which are set to expire.
The Economic Club of NY
The Economic Club of NY has little to do with economics, it is a finance industry “social” and networking club whose members work at the highest level in the finance industry. They represent the most successful elements of the finance industry. They are also a bunch of pretty smart people.
The club is known to feature prominent speakers. The audience was stacked with people who are either Trump-friendly or would benefit financially from a Trump administration.
Kamala has yet to make a major economic speech, but the standard set by Donald Trump for a speech on economic policy is very low.
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Trump being Trump
Since it is Trump being Trump, we have to list some of the lies and crazy statements in his speech. We are all used to them by now, but strange is strange.
Caracas, Venezuela has zero crime. “It is so safe the Economic Club should have their next meeting in Caracas.”
When he mentioned Kamala wanted to raise capital gains taxes. He also issued a “bribe” saying he would keep them the same or lower capital gains taxes implying that this was the only reason the members of the Club should consider when voting or making donations.
He claimed that the oceans would rise only one inch over the next four hundred years.
He said we would appoint Elon Musk as government efficiency Czar.