WASHINGTON – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday outlined an economic plan that he said would create "the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan tax reform" and "cut regulations massively."
Referring to former President Ronald Reagan, Trump described the basic tenets of the plan during a speech on the economy in Detroit, saying the details will be released later.
The GOP hopeful said he would reduce the tax brackets to three from seven and "dramatically streamline the process." He said he would eliminate the carried interest deduction and "other special interest loopholes that have been good for Wall Street" and unfair to the middle class.
But Trump did not specify those other loopholes, leaving muni markets to wonder if the exclusion for tax-exempt bond interest would be one of them.
He said tax simplification will be at the heart of his tax reform efforts. Trump said he shares the same goals as other Republicans with tax reform plans: "jobs, growth and opportunity." But he made clear that he would have his own proposals.
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With markets struggling to forecast the outcome and Donald Trump's erratic moves, planners are worried about how the new government will impact their business.
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Hillary Clinton has rolled out a plan to make college affordable that her presidential campaign has dubbed the New College Compact, enabling students to pay for higher education without taking out costly student loans.
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In his speech, Trump criticized President Obama and the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for a "tax, spend and regulate" agenda. He spent much of the speech lashing out at Clinton.
Promising to "massively cut regulations," Trump said one of his first actions as president would be to declare a moratorium on new regulations from federal agencies. He said he will ask each agency to prepare a list of regulations that are not that meaningful. "Those regulations will be eliminated immediately," he said.
"It is time to remove the anchor dragging us down," he said, claiming president Obama is responsible for adding close to 400 pages of regulations.
It is not clear whether that would include self-regulatory organizations like the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, which in is the process of extending its rules to municipal advisers and pushing through rules designed to force dealers to disclose markups on confirmations of muni trades to retail investors. But it would affect the Securities and Exchange Commission, which approves MSRB rules.
Trump's promise to rollback regulations comes as three Republican state parties are legally challenging the MSRB's efforts to extend its Rule G-37, which restricts certain political contributions of dealers, to municipal advisers.
Trump also said he would immediately cancel certain executive orders that he believes have been an over-reach of presidential authority or unnecessary.
The Republican candidate also promised to lift restrictions on energy development, especially on coal-fired power plants, which doesn't bode well for environmentalists.
