which candidate has the best economic plan to get america growing again? this is the most important question of the 2016 presidential campaign, yet think tanks and journalists keep getting the answer wrong. donald trump will cut taxes, reduce regulation, unleash our abundant energy and eliminate our trade deficit through muscular trade negotiations that increase exports, reduce imports and eliminate cheating. these policies will double our economic growth rate, create 25 million new jobs, boost labor and capital incomes, generate trillions of additional tax revenues and reduce debt as a percentage of gdp. hillary clinton <u+2019>s plan points in the opposite direction. her tax hikes on businesses and <u+201c>the rich<u+201d> reduce incentives to work and invest. she will increase the already staggering $2 trillion annual regulatory burden on the u.s. economy. she vows to put coal miners out of work and oil and natural gas on the back burner<u+2014>raising energy prices and reducing america<u+2019>s competitive advantage. after giving us three of the worst trade deals in u.s. history<u+2014>nafta in 1993, china<u+2019>s 2001 entry into the world trade organization, the 2012 south korea fiasco<u+2014>the clinton team is primed to pass the worst deal yet<u+2014>the trans-pacific partnership, which would decimate the american manufacturing base. how this adds up to a better economic plan than mr. trump<u+2019>s is as mysterious as it is counterintuitive. yet economic pundits keep popping up like bad pennies to make the claim. one reason is that most think tanks only consider the competing tax plans, not the overall economic plans. this has an inherent democratic bias because republican tax cuts viewed in isolation almost always reduce revenues. however, by failing to calculate the substantial positive revenue offsets of growth from the trump plan<u+2019>s other reforms, these tunnel-vision <u+201c>experts<u+201d> are missing the bigger picture. consider the nonpartisan tax foundation. it dynamically scored a revenue reduction under the trump plan of $2.6 trillion and a modest $663 billion surplus for the clinton plan over the next decade. these numbers suggest the clinton plan is more fiscally responsible. but in our dynamic scoring of mr. trump<u+2019>s plan, we found that the positive revenue offsets from increased growth derived from reduced regulatory burdens, lower energy costs and the elimination of the u.s. trade deficit amount to $2.4 trillion. a rapid acceleration of growth also leads to a significant reduction of our debt burden relative to gdp, and when mr. trump<u+2019>s spending cuts are added the plan achieves full revenue neutrality. what one gets with the clinton plan is even slower growth than we are experiencing now during the worst economic recovery since world war ii. as the tax foundation notes, the clinton plan <u+201c>would lead to a 2.6 percent lower level of gdp<u+201d> and <u+201c>lower levels of wages and full-time equivalent jobs.<u+201d> yet reporters keep writing summaries like these: <u+201c>the trump plan blows a hole in the federal budget . . . clinton<u+2019>s plan, when coupled with her spending ambitions, would leave the budget deficit about where it is today.<u+201d> even those few analysts who concede the need to model energy, regulatory and trade reforms have concocted arguments to say it doesn<u+2019>t matter. some falsely assert that the u.s. and other developed countries have settled into a <u+201c>new normal<u+201d> of slower economic growth due to greater competition from developing countries and demographic changes beyond our control. but to quote mr. trump<u+2019>s running mate, gov. mike pence, <u+201c>people in scranton know different. people in fort wayne know different.<u+201d> just two years ago, according to a 2014 analysis by republicans on the senate budget committee, nearly one in four americans in their prime working years (ages 25-54) were jobless. this is not the new normal. it<u+2019>s the new dismal. others argue that any trump growth will be choked off by deficit-driven higher interest rates that will <u+201c>crowd out<u+201d> private investment and bring the trump economy back to earth. never mind that our scoring of the trump plan found it to be revenue neutral, or the $1.3 trillion in corporate and personal savings generated by growth under the plan that will be used to fuel investment. this raises the question: why have interest rates gone down over the last eight years as the obama-clinton regime has doubled our national debt from $10 trillion to nearly $20 trillion? another line of argument insists that reducing the regulatory burden and unleashing energy resources would have no impact on growth. apparently, extending permitting and construction times, delivering products more slowly to markets, and facility shutdowns have no efficiency effects. apparently, lifting prohibitions on resource extraction can<u+2019>t reduce costs and improve american competitiveness. apparently, it is better to keep employing armies of regulators rather than let them find jobs in more productive occupations. finally, there is the trade-war straw man used to forecast armageddon. this is an alarmist misread of the bargaining table in trade negotiations. most of america<u+2019>s $766 billion annual trade deficit in goods is with a few countries, all of which need our markets far more than we need theirs, including china, germany, japan, mexico and south korea. a 10% change in the mix of u.s. international trade could eliminate that deficit, through smart, tough negotiations. as the biggest market in the world, we have all the leverage. no one makes better deals than mr. trump. analysts and journalists are doing voters a tremendous disservice by not analyzing the complete clinton and trump economic plans. it should be obvious to any reasonable observer that the integrative and synergistic trump plan offers this country a very bright future. the clinton plan merely saddles us with more of the dim past we have suffered under obamanomics. it<u+2019>s a very clear choice on nov. 8. mr. ross is a private-equity investor. mr. navarro is a business professor at the university of california, irvine. both are senior policy advisers to the trump campaign.
a vote for trump is a vote for growth - wsj
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