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More than 35 American economists surveyed last week disagree with a basic element of President Trump’s proposed tax plan: whether it will pay for itself. In an unusual display of unity, 100 percent of participating economists rejected the idea this week that Trump’s plans to drastically lower taxes on corporations, business, and individuals will create enough economic growth to offset the lost federal revenue and avoid adding to the national debt.
Two economists initially wrote they agreed the plan would pay for itself, but when emailed by Vox, they both said they’d made mistakes on the survey.
On Tuesday, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business released results from a poll of 42 renowned economists. When asked to evaluate the claim that Trump’s tax cuts will pay for themselves through economic growth, 84 percent disagreed (five of the economists didn’t weigh in). When I contacted the two economists whose opinions differed, they said that their answers were an error, and that they actually disagreed with the claim.
I “screwed up,” Stanford economist Kenneth Judd wrote to me in an email. He misread the question and meant to answer that he “strongly disagreed.”
So it turns out that 100 percent of the economists who participated in the survey doubt Trump can create enough economic growth with his tax cuts. They described the idea as “implausible” and “a deficit stimulus.” Several comments were, by economist standards, acerbic.
Influential MIT economist David Autor “strongly disagreed” with the logic behind the pay-for-itself feature, and explained it this way: “I'm not sure it should be called a plan because it's so devoid of content,” he wrote. “But absent offsetting tax increases, it would be a fiscal disaster.”
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