Trump stumps for tax reform, pitches it as boon for truckers
President Donald Trump pitched his tax plan as a boost for truckers at an event in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, saying “America first means putting American truckers first.”
Trump appeared before about 1,000 cheering people at an airplane hangar, dramatically draped with American flags. Two big rigs were in the background, part of
the president’s effort to pitch his tax overhaul as a boon for truckers.
The president has been trav-
eling the country to promote a plan that would dramatically cut corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 20 per- cent, reduce the number of personal income tax brackets and boost the standard deduction.
At his latest stop, Trump planned to argue that his tax reform framework would ben- efit truckers by lowering their tax rates, boosting manufacturing, and making it easier for
families to pass their trucking businesses on to their children.
“When your trucks are moving, America is grow- ing,” Trump said at Harris- burg International Airport in Middletown.
Trump is diving back into the tax fight after weeks in which his attention has shifted to rapidly emerging crises — including the mass shooting in Las Vegas and the hurricane recovery effort in Puerto Rico — as well as dramas of his own making, such as his escalating feud with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and public tension with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Taxes are the chief legislative priority for Republicans hungry for a major legislative achievement. With the 2018 campaign year looming, GOP lawmakers want something to show for their time as the majority party, and tax legislation remains their best hope.
Trump has left it up to Congress to fill in many specifics of his plan, which omits details such as the income levels for his new tax brackets. The outreach to truckers in Pennsylvania is an attempt to give a blue-collar appeal to a framework that outside tax analysts say would largely favor the wealthy.
About two-thirds of trucking firms are structured as small businesses in which the profits double as the owners’ income, what’s commonly known as “pass-through” companies, said Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations.
The framework would cut the tax rate for these firms to 25 percent from 39.6 percent.
“It’s pretty critical for our membership,” Spear said.
But the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said few truckers would benefit from this preferential rate because the majority of truck drivers are employees rather than pass-through business owners, based on its analysis of Census data.
Republicans in Congress aren’t solidly behind Trump, with some from high-tax states balking because the framework calls for eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes.