President Donald Trump already has taken a number of steps to help the national economy, especially with his move to cut taxes on American businesses, Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Tuesday.
"We used to have a 35 percent tax on all American businesses," Norquist told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"China has 25; we had 35, and then we wonder why we couldn't compete during the Obama years. We were shooting ourselves in the foot."
Trump, though, pulled the tax rate down to 21 percent, Norquist said, and still wants it down to 15 percent.
"I think that's a great idea," he said. "We should have the lowest corporate tax in the world, not what we had until seven months ago, the highest, the stupidest."
Norquist also commented on the topic of tariffs, saying Trump does want to get the United States to the place where there are lower tariffs and to lower non-tariff barriers and regulatory barriers both in the United States and in other countries.
"Other countries have higher tariffs against us than we do against them, and higher and more destructive non-tariff barriers," Norquist said. "He is trying to negotiate that down. The president is negotiating it down by threatening tariffs . . . Japan needs to do better, China needs to do better. The rest of the world steals our intellectual property. They extort that and steal it and copy it."
Norquist said he also agrees with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady's idea to make tax cuts permanent.
"It's telling the American people, this tax reduction is not a one-time thing," Norquist said of the Texas Republican's call. "We'll do it every year. We had a tax cut in January and in 2017 and 2018, and we'll have one every year during this Republican House, Senate, and presidency. That's the message that Brady and the Republicans and White House are putting out, and they are laying out we want to make some of the individual tax cuts permanent, very good, very important."
Norquist also called for expanding tax-free savings so people can save for their retirement, healthcare, and education.
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