broken. president trump said he d deliver a big tax cut for corporations and he accomplished that with the help of the republican led congress, but promises that the tax cut would mean b jobs and investment have not come to fruition. we have frank with us. you actually, you worked on new report. it looks at how these tax cuts played out. president trump said it would translate into heavy investment and hiring. that was going to help the economy. did that happen? well, so far, among the business economists and corporations, that hasn t translated into big increases in investment spending yet. probably helped that some firms, but not at the large companies that participate in the survey. so was the expectation that certainly coming from president trump s promises that that was what he wanted to happen, right? well, in part. and certainly, the tax cuts did have some benefits in terms of
we ve seen this throughout blue-collar workers, a big story in the paper a couple of weeks ago. blue-collar workers have their best increase in many years. president trump you know, has opened up the economy. lowered tax rates, deregulation, low energy, he stopped the war against business. he stopped the war against success and energy. now the american economy is crushing it and it will go on for a while in my judgment. maria: for a while is what people are questioning. there s a narrative as you know, things will start to slow down pretty significantly going to 2020 and in 2020 because of higher interest rates and the demographic issues. do you see that slow down on the horizon? i sure don t! 2020 is a couple of years away. i think that we are in the biggest capital goods business investment spending in 20
we re talking about next year, a 1 trillion dll budget deficit. because of all the huge spending that s going on during the trump administration and the reduced revenue coming in. is this what the republicans ran on to have a new deficit? no, but one, revenues have increased despite of the tax code. why is this republican leadership of the house and the senate and republican investment spending a lot more raising the national debt. the president s budget he put forward balanced the budget in ten years. the problem has been we cannot to do the same this congress. we need nine democrats to walk over.
heather: you bring up a good point because president trump s detractors have said this is not sustainable moving forward so it s good you have a couple ideas as to how it can besustained . reporter: i think it can be sustained by changing the art on investment spending. we ve been under investing in technology. we invent technology and it gets applied in china where it grows at six percent a year. by lowering the tax rate you bring the capital gains down where it is in other developing countries. it s still a little bit higher but this encourages companies to do things like implement more artificial intelligence, use more robots, things that raise productivity. productivity is critical because our population is growing slowly likechina . we cangrow more rapidly, people say we can t. look at the reagan years, we grew at four percent back then and we can do it now . heather: eve marisi joining us, we always love it when you are with us. have a greatweek . the time is 20 minutes after
chris: even if we end up in a trade war? we re not going to end up in a trade war. chris: they aren t backing off. we haven t even enact ad anything yet. chris: i understand. let s go easy on the trade war. chris: you said the president isn t bluffing. you say tariffs have to be part of the discussion. if they don t back off we llhs see. remember this. the u.s. economy s doing very wellis now. by the way, at the top, you learned your lessons well when we d first spoke back in 1981. chris: i listened. i m proud of you. having said all that, we re growing at over 3% annual rate for the last three quarters. businessss investment spending, equipment spending is booming. jobs are rising. consumer confidence is high. small business confidence is high. all i m saying is, forget trade wars. why don t you look at the progress of the american economy. we can take chris: that s the concern that people have is that this i going to put a brake on that. it can t possibly.