“Go big, or go home,” the adage advises.
President-elect Donald Trump is following this advice.
Trump wants to put multiple, large key agenda items into a single, massive bill—which he says he wants passed “quickly.” This strategy makes sense as a White House has its most powerful leverage within its first 100 days.
The package would include items on tax reform, immigration and border security, and unleashing U.S. energy production.
Congress is wasting no time, with the U.S. House Ways & Committee hosting a Tuesday hearing called “The Need to Make Permanent the Trump Tax Cuts for Working Families.”
In December 2017, a Republican Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a package of sweeping reforms into the U.S. tax code, both for individual filers and corporations.
As we published in December 2024, Congress and Trump are poised to renew the expiring provisions of the law as well as add additional reforms. The TCJA cut income tax rates for workers at every level and nearly doubled the standard deduction, shielding more income from taxation. It expanded the child tax credit and preserved other popular tax benefits like the deductions for mortgage interest and charitable deductions, among others.
America’s regulatory and tax environment is part of our global competitive advantage. This is powerfully illustrated by the Visual Capitalist’s new app, Voronoi, which provides a stunning graphic representation of America’s top states and compares their GDP per capita with G7 countries, the top seven wealthiest countries in the world:
Only Canada and Germany are wealthier than Mississippi, the state with the lowest GDP per capita. What this means is that the average German or Canadian is, on average, poorer than almost the poorest American. And yet Misssippi is still wealthier than four G7 countries—France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Those other countries might have great exports like food (France, Italy, Japan) or the Beatles (U.K.), but when it comes to innovation and economic policy, the United States is leading the way.