President Donald Trump plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in meetings with leaders of Canada and Mexico, following up on a campaign promise to revamp the 23 year-old trade agreement. In a meeting with congressional leaders last Thursday, Trump announced he will be sending a letter to the Ways and Means and finance committees to kick off the process of reopening NAFTA.
Congressman Richard Neal (D-Springfield) is the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee and a key player in the process. Neal told Boston Public Radio he met with Trump to discuss the future of NAFTA and the possibility of major tax cuts for the middle class, along with a few other key issues he felt needed explanation. “I think that he’s on a steep learning curve as it relates to many of these policies,” Neal said. “He went back and forth with the declaration of how bad every trade deal is. He has a particular emphasis on the word ‘China’—the way he says it, and he pointed out that the Chinese were eating our lunch. At the same time, he mentioned currency manipulation, that’s a bit of a dated view.”
According to Neal, Trump touched on several campaign points in the meeting, including corporate tax codes. Trump championed a plan during his election to lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax. “The president has said that he is going to take the corporate rate to 15 percent,” Neal said, “and I don’t know anybody who is a Republican in congress that thinks that’s a very good idea.”
Neal suggested Trump’s tax proposal was a nod to the ‘trickle down’ economic policies of the Reagan era. “If you analyze the middle-class tax cut that he’s proposing, it would be about $240 a year for the average middle-class family in America,” Neal said. “It conveniently leaves out the argument that you need to look at the distribution tables, once the rates are cut. If you cut the rate for the individual, the people at the top are the ones that derive the benefit.”
The question now, Neal says, is how to take next steps. “I think that we all agree on the following: that the American tax code on the corporate side and on the personal side, is antiquated,” Neal said. “The last time we touched it was in 1986, and it is uncompetitive and it is inefficient. But when the disagreement settles in, it’s how to go forward.”
To hear Congressman Richard Neal’s full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
