On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article listing three basic ways to restore the American economy.
The article reports:
1) Make the 2017 tax cuts permanent: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been one of the most successful pieces of legislation in recent years. Despite that, many of its critical provisions are set to expire in 2025 if Congress does not act soon.
For most Americans, the most important aspect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that is set to retire is the individual income-tax cuts. That provision cut taxes for 80% of Americans, saving individuals an estimated $1,400 annually, with lower- and middle-income Americans benefiting the most.
If Congress lets this provision of the act expire, middle-class families are likely to pay over $1,000 more in taxes annually.
…2) Eliminate special tariffs: Politicians continually peddle the falsehood that tariffs help working-class Americans, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Tariffs are an inherently regressive form of tax that places an undue burden on lower- and middle-income families.
Since 2018, Americans have paid more than $280 million in extra taxes to buy washing machines and washing machine parts from abroad. That has directly contributed to the steep rise in prices of laundry equipment, which was up 7.9% year-over-year in January.
Unfortunately, that was not the only sector negatively affected by tariffs. Americans have paid more than $12 billion in tariffs on imports of aluminum and steel since 2018.
Steel and aluminum are crucial inputs for countless manufactured goods, but the automotive industry has been one of the hardest hit. The price of new vehicles rose more than 12% year-over-year in January.
…3) End the war on conventional fuels: The damaging effects of bad policy might not be more obvious in any other area of the economy than in the energy sector.
Energy prices rose nearly 27% year-over-year in January, based on the Consumer Price Index, with gasoline and natural gas rising 40% and 23.9%, respectively.
Washington’s war on conventional fuels is clearly contributing to the rapid increase in prices of basic sources of energy that Americans use every day to heat their homes and get to work.
Not only has Washington made it harder to transport fuel (for example, by canceling or slow-walking new pipeline construction), but it has also made it more difficult and expensive to produce natural gas, coal, and oil here in the United States, creating an avoidable reliance on foreign imports.
The administration has proposed or issued new regulations burdening nearly every aspect of conventional energy markets, from financing to consumer use.
Other holdover policies—some decades or even a century old—are increasing costs and inefficiency in energy markets. For example, unnecessary regulations and mandates have increased the costs of gasoline and have put economic pressure on refineries, some of which have had to close or downsize.
Please follow the link to the article for further information.