Trump tax tour heads to friendly territory

BISMARCK, N.D. — When Donald Trump brings his tax reform tour to North Dakota, he’ll be on friendly turf — a deep-red state he carried by 36 points last year, and one that got an immediate boost when he threw his young presidency behind a controversial oil pipeline.

But even Trump backers in North Dakota want to see more detail about what he’s got planned when it comes to taxes beyond the limited aims sketched out so far.

“The taxes need to come down much lower,” Art Wood, 78, a retired pastor who was chatting with friends at a Fargo shopping mall, said Friday. “I don’t understand a lot of it, so I hope he explains it to us next week.”

Wood’s ask for lower taxes is at the core of Trump’s dilemma as he sets out to try to sell his supporters on his push to rewrite the tax code — a campaign that will take him to North Dakota Wednesday. The celebrity businessman cemented his coalition with populist promises to give an economic boost to people left behind by the slow recovery of the Obama years. But both he and his party also have made big promises of lower tax rates to corporate America and top earners. Reconciling those two elements, while holding to the party’s stated opposition to increasing the deficit, is as difficult as it gets.

Trump isn’t expected to add much meat to the bone on Wednesday. After months of trying to write a plan, Trump’s economic advisers now say they will leave the details to Congress, which is slated to return from August recess this week.

“I want to work with Congress on a plan that is pro-growth, pro-jobs, proworker and pro-American,” Trump wrote in a Labor Day op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Trump said his plan would “dramatically reduce income taxes for American workers and families,” nearly double the standard deduction “to help families get ahead,” and make an overly complicated tax code “more simple and fair.”