Sen. Mitt Romney weighs in on Trump, Harris economic plans

Sen. Mitt Romney said the economic plans of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump aren’t focused on creating growth, or helping the country get out of debt — the issue top of mind for the Utah senator as he prepares to leave the Senate after one term in office.
“I haven’t seen either Vice President Harris or President Trump look at tax policy to say what will actually create growth, as opposed to what will create votes,” he said, speaking to a group of entrepreneurs at Kiln in Lehi, Utah, on Tuesday.
Romney panned the idea of eliminating taxes on tips or eliminating the ceiling on state and local tax deductions, policies both Trump and Harris have championed.
He did suggest there would need to be a mixture of tax increases, changes to Social Security and economic growth in order to solve the debt crisis.
The biggest problem with the nation’s debt — which is projected to eclipse the size of the U.S. economy in the next few years — is that rising interest rates also make interest payments on the debt more expensive. The $1 trillion a year the U.S. is spending on interest on the debt is four times the amount the country spends on military hardware, and is enough that it could double Social Security payments.
Besides focusing on tax policy, Romney said Trump and Harris would need to fix immigration in order to spur growth — something he said he doesn’t expect Trump would agree to.
On Trump’s idea of putting a 10% tariff on all imports coming into the U.S., Romney said he was not sure what the outcome of that would be.
“One of the things that President Trump has proposed, which frankly I don’t know what impact it would have, is a 10% on all imported goods. I know there are a lot of different viewpoints on that. I anticipate that if we were to do that, other countries would do the same thing,” he said.
“We tried that prior to the Great Depression — I’m not suggesting that that’s what would happen — but I don’t know what the impact of that would be.”
He said tariffs would likely slow growth, but, he said, “that’s worth calculating.”