NEW YORK — Donald Trump unveiled a pledge on Thursday to create 25 million jobs during the next decade, but he offered few details on how he would achieve that ambitious goal as president.
NEW YORK — Donald Trump unveiled a pledge on Thursday to create 25 million jobs during the next decade, but he offered few details on how he would achieve that ambitious goal as president.
In remarks that may stir new consternation abroad, Trump told the Economic Club of New York that he would pay for his economic agenda in part by requiring allies to shoulder the full cost of U.S. military resources deployed in their defense.
Trump has long criticized the country’s defense arrangements, but on Thursday he drew an uncommonly straight line between his job-creation promises and the “billions and billions of dollars” currently spent on “defending other people.” He specifically mentioned Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea as “economic behemoths” that the United States should not pay to protect.
“You could ask yourself, how long would Saudi Arabia even be there if we weren’t defending them?” Trump said in his speech. “And I think we should defend them, but we have to be compensated properly.”
He added, “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to hear that.”
Speaking at the Waldorf Astoria, Trump largely reiterated a broad economic vision he outlined in Detroit last month. He has vowed to slash taxes on business and scale back federal regulations, and to redraft or void trade agreements he views as disadvantageous to the U.S.
But Trump’s remarks also underscored the opaque and improvisational nature of his policy agenda, which has been defined by grand promises but few concrete details. By putting a hard number on his job-creation promises — even if far-fetched — Trump may be aiming to strengthen a campaign message that has been light on policy outside of the issues of immigration and trade.
And Trump has now twice revised his tax proposals during the campaign, first sharply scaling back plans for a $10 trillion tax cut and then, on Thursday, backing away from several ideas that drew criticism and mockery in the past.
He partly rolled back his earlier proposals to reduce corporate taxation: Trump still proposes a 15 percent tax rate on corporate income, but it would no longer apply to business income reported on personal taxes, generally limiting the lower rate to the largest corporations. He also reduced a tax break that generated backlash because it would particularly benefit real estate developers.
Trump also now proposes to cut federal taxes by $4.4 trillion, not $10 trillion; he insists the plan would ultimately cost the government only $2.6 trillion in revenue, with the difference made up in economic growth.
Trump spoke loosely and plainly enjoyed himself, repeatedly teasing the well-tailored crowd about their own wealth and business ventures. He put his audience on notice that he would enlist some of them in government, to help renegotiate deals far larger than any they had dealt with before.
“Hate to say it,” Trump joked, “but your companies are peanuts.”
But Trump also continued to cast himself as a champion of working-class interests, and in his remarks invoked nostalgia for the heyday of the American auto industry, steel manufacturing and coal mining. And Trump attacked Clinton for having described some of his supporters as “deplorables” for holding views she called bigoted.
“My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving and that our economy can never grow as it did once before,” Trump said. “And boy, oh boy, did it used to grow.”
Trump’s description of an economy growing more slowly than it did after World War II until 2000 is accurate. But his promise to return to that postwar growth rate and add 25 million jobs during the next decade would be difficult to attain, given the nation’s shifting demographics.
© 2016 The New York Times Company