Trump promises US business leaders to "massively" cut taxes

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (KUNA) -- During a meeting with top US business leaders on Monday, President Donald Trump promised that massive tax cuts and reductions in regulations were on the way.
"We are going to be cutting taxes massively for both the middle class and for companies, and that is massively," Trump said.
"We are trying to get it down to anywhere from 15 to 20 percent, and it is now 35 percent, but it is probably more 38 percent than it is 35, wouldn't you say?" The President also said his administration will "be cutting regulation massively. ... We think we can cut regulations by 75 percent, maybe more." So companies will now have an "incentive to build," he said.
The flip side of Trump's remarks was a pledge to pursue protectionist policies for companies that choose to leave the US.
"So a company that wants to fire all of its people in the United States and build some factory someplace else and then thinks that that product is going to just flow across the border into the United States, that is not going to happen," Trump said.
"They are going to have a tax to pay, a border tax -- substantial border tax." "Now some people would say that is not free trade, but we do not have free trade now, because we are the only one that makes it easy to come into the country," he said.
"If you look at China, if you look at many other countries ... they cannot believe what we do. So we take in things free, and yet if you want to ... sell something into China and other countries, it is very, very hard. In some cases, it is impossible. They won't even take your product.
"But when they do take your product, they charge a lot of tax," he added. "So I do not call that free trade. What we want is fair trade. And we are going to treat countries fairly, but they have to treat us fairly." The business leaders attending the White House meeting were Michael Dell of Dell Technologies, Jeff Fettig of Whirlpool, Mark Fields of Ford Motor Co., Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson, Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, Klaus Kleinfeld of Arconic, Andrew Liveris of Dow Chemical, Mario Longhi of US Steel, Elon Musk of SpaceX, Kevin Plank of Under Armour, Mark Sutton of International Paper and Wendell Weeks of Corning. (end) rm.ibi