Trump's Tax Cuts at Year 1: More Growth, More Red Ink

摘要

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that President Trump signed a year ago seems to have boosted economic growth in 2018. But there's little evidence yet that it's setting up the U.S. economy for faster growth over the longer term, which is what the White House and the legislation's backers in Congress promised.There's a lot we still don't know about the impact of the TCJA, given that the tax code is just one of many variables influencing the economy. "There will never be the smoking-gun study that says, 'This was the effect,'" says Joseph Rosenberg, a senior research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.The early results were impressive. Growth, which has averaged 2.2 percent a year since the end of the recession in 2009, accelerated to 4.2 percent in the second quarter, on an annualized basis, and a still strong 3.5 percent in the third. The robust expansion helped drive down unemployment in September to a 49-year low of 3.7 percent, where it remains.