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President Donald Trump’s election to a second time period was a win for business and funding — two vital drivers of economic growth. His marketing campaign guarantees largely mirrored a pro-business ideology, promising help for entrepreneurship and company growth and starkly contrasting with Vice President Kamala Harris’s consumer-focused method, which appeared to miss the essential steadiness between funding and consumption.
Donald Trump’s business-driven agenda
A cornerstone of President Trump’s first time period was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which positioned a transparent emphasis on empowering small businesses, entrepreneurs and buyers to place more cash again into their ventures. The TCJA was full of pro-growth insurance policies, together with the 20% qualified business income (QBI) deduction, the flexibility to completely expense tools purchases and cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Throughout the marketing campaign, President Trump urged taking this even additional by lowering the tax rate to 15%, underscoring his dedication to stimulate company funding.
These helps for enterprise and funding labored. With a decrease tax burden and focused incentives, entrepreneurs and companies made significant investments in the U.S. — shopping for extra tools, including jobs and creating much-needed items and companies for society. Extending the QBI deduction and enhancing it to 25-30% would additional incentivize entrepreneurship, particularly if the deduction utilized to all enterprise sorts, together with service industries.
President Trump additionally acknowledges that analysis and growth play a essential position in innovation and financial growth. By advocating for everlasting bonus depreciation, Trump aimed to align the U.S. with different nations that supply full deductions for tools investments. Nevertheless, this dedication ought to lengthen to R&D tax insurance policies. Most different nations have significantly better R&D tax advantages than the U.S., placing our companies at a drawback.
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The distinction with Kamala Harris’s consumer-centric focus
The Harris-Walz marketing campaign took the other method.
All through the marketing campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris strongly emphasised consumer protection. Her proposals included price controls and programs to boost consumer spending, prioritizing fast client advantages over long-term financial progress.
Value controls typically sound enticing on the floor however, in actuality, distort the market, typically discouraging companies from investing in areas the place their returns can be capped. This stifles innovation and, in the long term, reduces competitiveness on a worldwide scale.
Vice President Harris’s concentrate on a consumption-driven economic system would have overly relied on short-term spending. With out funding in infrastructure, know-how and R&D, the economic system dangers stagnating. As well as, she proposed raising corporate taxes to 28% and mixed capital gains taxes to 33%. The cash that may go towards increased taxes would then not be out there as capital for companies to increase, rent and innovate, finally hindering financial progress.
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A name for a concentrate on pro-business insurance policies
Regardless of a largely pro-business stance, President Trump additionally floated his share of consumer-focused insurance policies throughout the marketing campaign. Strategies to eliminate income taxes on tips and overtime pay have been common amongst giant and vital segments of voters however would trigger havoc for enterprise homeowners. The tax change would create large inequity amongst staff in the identical enterprise, with hosts and cooks paying taxes on their full earnings whereas servers wouldn’t. It additionally would create unintended incentives for individuals to shift to nonexempt (and overtime-laden) work schedules.
Based mostly on his marketing campaign rhetoric, President Trump additionally appears sure to make use of tariffs as leverage with U.S. buying and selling companions, particularly China and Mexico. As all tariffs do, that may absolutely hit the pocketbooks of customers and companies alike.
As President Trump embarks on his second time period, each he and Congress should keep centered on insurance policies that bolster enterprise and funding. That is the confirmed path to sustained financial progress and prosperity.
It is also not a partisan place. The primary time a U.S. president inspired funding via financial coverage was when President John F. Kennedy signed legislation creating the investment tax credit in 1962, encouraging companies to purchase tools throughout a time when the economic system had slowed. President Ronald Reagan additionally used financial coverage to spice up funding, including important advantages to actual property funding in 1981.
President Trump and the following Congress have a possibility so as to add to this constructive legacy. They merely want to remain centered and united on the fitting coverage modifications. Lowering enterprise tax charges, encouraging funding and supporting entrepreneurship and innovation would go a great distance towards enhancing U.S. competitiveness with the remainder of the world. Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of the American economic system.
Let’s not permit this second to slide by.