During the opening monologue on Sunday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” host Mark Levin offered his view on President Donald Trump’s tariff plan and contrasted it with the Democratic Party’s approach to the economy.
Levin called the Trump administration’s effort a “growth plan” while criticizing Democrats for their approach centered on the redistribution of wealth.
Transcript as follows:
LEVIN: Can somebody please tell me what exactly are the Democrats doing to help our economy, to improve our country? What are they doing to help working men and women across the country, manufacturing across the country? All they want to do, as Reagan would say, is tax and spend, tax and spend.
They’re very worried about the tariffs, not for traditional reasons that people might worry about tariffs, but because they say it’s going to increase prices to you, Mr. And Mrs. America.
Are the Democrats really concerned about that since they drove up inflation, they drove up the cost of fuel, they drove up the cost of food and their policies more taxes would do more of the same? Who are these people?
Well, we get this report timed perfectly by something called the Joint Tax Committee, and they’re supposed to be professionals. You know what’s funny about the Joint Tax Committee and the Congressional Budget Office? They’re never right. They’re never right about anything. And here’s POLITICO, “Democrats tout new official estimates showing GOP tax cuts could be costlier than expected.” The numbers from the Joint Committee on Taxation add to Democrats’ talking points and could give GOP deficit hawks more heartburn.”
But the GOP deficit hawks, who are they? First of all, they don’t even exist. Will you just cool it for a little while?
Democrats are wielding new official projections showing the price tag for extending Republicans expiring tax cuts could reach a bigger than expected, $4.6 trillion — and the tax cuts Trump wants on top of that $5.5 trillion.
Oh, my God, now these would be the same Democrats who just spent us into oblivion with the phony Inflation Reduction Act, which we’re still suffering from. They would spend trillions more.
Do you remember? Biden wanted to spend two or three trillion dollars more than they already spent. Only when it comes to tax cuts, are they concerned, and as I explained last evening, tax cuts don’t create deficits, Congress does, the government does. Tax cuts simply mean you keep more of your money and you invest it, you’re not creating anything except wealth and prosperity and growth. So that’s a lie, and they bring their experts in to tell us, if you keep more of your money, it creates a debt for the federal government.
I don’t work for the federal government, do you? Why don’t they get their house in order? DOGE, Musk, his people, they’ve demonstrated hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud. The GAO, half a trillion dollars a year, and you and I are supposed to be upset when they — we’re going to cut your taxes. No, let us keep our money.
Now I want to dig into this, what exactly is the plan the Democrats have, or, for that matter, some of these Republicans have when it comes to manufacturing in America? We have a big problem on manufacturing. The Census Bureau confirms that we do. And this is not that long ago. It’s August 2024. You want to hear some stark numbers?
Let’s start with the number of manufacturing firms in the United States, which declined by 21 percent in 20 years. Twenty-one percent.
This drop accounts for a decrease in firms in every manufacturing sector labeled according to the North American Industry Classification System. The fall in manufacturing firms is even more dramatic when considering the overall growth of the United States economy. Since 2002, the economy has grown substantially, with the number of American companies increasing by almost 600,000 or 10 percent.
Not only has manufacturing not kept up with the national growth, it has decreased substantially. We’re not manufacturing enough anymore. This is Trump’s point.
What’s the Democrats proposal? To tax the companies, to tax American business, to raise the corporate income tax. It’s already the highest in the free world, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
So the Democrats, when it comes to the economy and National Security and law and order, they’re suicidal. They’re insane. Many proponents of the narrative that manufacturing is stronger than ever in the United States will argue that the decline in these indicators reflects industry consolidation and superior productivity.
In their view, firms have not gone out of business due to global competition, they have merged by. Likewise, jobs and payroll are down because of superior manufacturing productivity. However, the data shows that both excuses are wrong. This is from ITIF.
Consolidation data on the market share the four largest firms in an industry, from the Census Bureau tells a different story. From 2002 to 2017, the latest years we have the information. The average C4 ratio, which is the market share of the top four manufacturing firms in an industry, increased by less than one percent. That cannot explain the relative loss of 31 percent of manufacturing firms from 2002 to 2022, annual growth in manufacturing labor productivity averaged 1.3 percent per year, compared to 1.8 percent for the overall non-farm business economy. This means productivity cannot explain the steep loss of jobs. This is what I was explaining last evening. Trump wants to re-industrialize America, and we better re-industrialize America. I’ll give you just one example.
Shipping: U.S. shipping is at its lowest ever. How did America fall so far? And this is from 2021, “Forbes.” A nation that was among the world’s leaders in commercial ship building at key junctions in its history today builds less than 10 vessels for ocean going commerce in a typical year. China builds over a thousand such ships every year. The entire U.S. registered fleet of ocean going commercial ships number fewer than 200 vessels. The entire fleet out of a global total of 44,000.
Last time I checked, we have two oceans, too. Aren’t we supposed to have the biggest Navy? The biggest commercial shipping building and so forth? And despite trade flows to and from America exceeding a trillion dollars annually, the vast preponderance of which travel by sea. U.S. registered ships carry barely one percent of that traffic.
Since 1951, the U.S. Merchant Marine transported a third of all global trade. Not anymore. To make matters worse, the U.S. Navy has apparently lost its capacity to keep up with China in military ship building.
This is why manufacturing is important. You know, we’re beyond that now. We’re a tech economy, maybe. But we better get back to manufacturing.
China now has the largest fleet of warships in the world, about 350. We have less than 300. The Navy request for ship construction funds envisions building only four combat vessels next year out of a total of eight. A level of effort that, if sustained, would guarantee Chinese maritime dominance by 2030.
U.S. sailors are still better trained and better equipped than their Chinese counterparts, but all the trends are in the wrong direction. The U.S. Merchant Marine today is so small that analysts question its ability to support military sealift requirements in a war.
You pro-Putin types and pro-Iran types, you should be happy about this. We’re hollowing out our military. You know, America First, but you really argue for America last.
With only 180 or so ocean going vessels in the U.S. registered commercial fleet, less than 12,000 professional mariners, most of whom would be tied up serving domestic roots at the onset of a war, the capacity of the private sector to supplement the government’s aged collection of sea lift vessels in an emergency is problematic at best.
We know that Beijing’s long term goal is to dominate global supply chains for vital industrial goods. So the fact that China is out producing America in large commercial fleets, 100 to one, should have elicited a policy response from Washington.
The decline of U.S. shipbuilding is just one facet of America’s broader de- industrialization, a process that has seen the land of Edison and Westinghouse gradually abandon the production of every industrial product, from smartphones to aluminum since the Cold War ended.
It was not so long ago the U.S. hosted a dozen builders of aircraft. Today, there is exactly one manufacturer of large aircraft left, and that company has been faltering of late.
So what do the Democrats want to do about this? Let me ask you this. What do the Congressional Republicans want to do about this? Donald Trump comes along and says, I’ve got to deal with this. What has Congress done? They’ve sat there. They’ve watched. They wring their hands.
They build up the debt, they build up the deficit, taxes it through the roof. The border is wide open, and now they’re attacking Trump’s plan.
I say we get behind Trump’s plan, and fast, and fast.
Tax Foundation: We have anti-American tax policies. The worst impediment to the American worker, to American prosperity, to the prosperity for all Americans, is us. Currently, China provides more favorable tax treatment of investment broadly and layers on much greater magnitude of subsidies than the United States, particularly with its super deduction for research and development.
China’s super deduction, I’ll get to that in a minute.
In the United States, full cost recovery for machinery and equipment investment, R&D is phasing out. A new tax penalty for R&D has taken effect, and the headline corporate rate, when including the average of state and local rates, tax rates, sits higher than China’s headline rate.
China’s headline rate, the total combined rate local, state, federal, is 25 percent; ours is 32 percent.
So China, a communist regime has a lower corporate tax rate overall than America. And the Democrats their tax plan, they want to jack up the income tax on corporations. Why? Because corporations don’t vote. They want to jack it up. So what happens to our manufacturing industries then? What happens to our blue collar employees then? What happens to our economy then?
They are a grave enemy. You know, President Trump used to talk about the enemy within. Lincoln talked about it. Mattis talked about it in a speech. We do have an enemy within that is constantly undermining our efforts to cut government, to find waste, fraud and abuse, constantly undermining our sovereignty on the border, constantly undermining the cops, other law enforcement, constantly coming to the rescue of the enemy and defending terrorists and all the rest. I think I call that the Democratic Party. I think I will.
Better tax policy would not serve as a cure all for narrower security related economic concerns with China, but would support increased capacity to help meet such challenges, as it would. Restoring expensing for research and development, machinery, equipment, extending better cost recovery to structures’ investment, avoiding raising the corporate tax rate would create a stronger pro-investment policy environment for the U.S. economy. This is a Tax Foundation.
Isn’t that exactly what Trump is saying. We need to cut the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent for companies in America, companies that come into America, companies that invest in America. He sees this. He’s a multi- billionaire, but not because he inherited it, not because he’s like Soros, who plays the markets and all the rest, or Buffett, who is a conglomerate, he buys things, but because he built things, just like Elon Musk, he built things.
There’s many ways to become a billionaire. Sometimes he actually built things, and that’s what they’ve done.
Let’s go on. Our own tax policies, and the Democrats, look at this tax cuts, it’s going to create a debt while they run up the debt through government spending with the Inflation Reduction Act.
The almost exact inverse is true of the income tax usage. The U.S. raises 45.3 percent of revenue from individual income taxes, well above the average for most industrial nations of 23.6 percent and dwarfing China’s total of 6.1 percent.
China basically has a sales tax, a use tax, and that’s where most of their money comes in. They don’t have a massive income tax. We do, a massive income tax.
What else? Corporate income taxes are considered the most economically harmful taxes per dollar raised as they significantly distort capital investment. But corporations don’t vote. Get them. Get them. In fact, you keep hearing they don’t pay taxes. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Corporate income tax affects investment incentives by raising the cost of capital, making it more costly for companies to invest in equipment, factories, and productive technologies. It’s as if we kneecap our own companies in our own country, while the Communist Chinese are running wild, while the Indians are running wild, while other countries are running wild.
We are punishing our own companies, even when they stay in America, and Trump is saying, I’ve got to fix that. I’ve got to fix that.
So you increase taxes on American business. They’re not only less competitive, they drive up prices. They say we’re worried about tariffs that’s going to drive up prices.
The Democrats are always driving up prices with taxes, with regulations, with union rules, with environmental rules, on and on and on. They’re the ones driving up tax rates.
The United States treats research and development poorly compared to the rest of the world.
Historically, the U.S. allowed companies to fully deduct R&D costs, but since 2022, companies must deduct R&D expenses across five or even 15 years. In real terms, the delay means the companies only deduct around 89 percent of R&D costs over time, creating a tax penalty compared with other companies overseas.
Compared to other countries, the U.S. does not provide significant tax support for R&D. On average, European countries provide a 15 percent subsidy for R&D investment. The U.S. offers three percent. China has expanded its super deduction over time. What does that mean?
It means if a company in China that’s Chinese owned, invests $1.00 in research and development, they not only take a 100 percent deduction, they get a 200 percent reduction. Supercharged tax deduction, 200 percent, while our Democrats are talking about massively increasing taxes on corporations.
Now, one other thing I want to get into. This idea of they want tax cuts for the rich. Some of you aren’t going to like this, because some of you like the Democratic Party propaganda, not most of you, you’re smart if you’re watching this show.
But again, the Tax Foundation: IRS data indicates that the wealthy in America — uh-oh — are bearing the heaviest share of the income tax burden that in any time in recent memory. This is from 2021.
On the other hand, more than 53 million low and middle income taxpayers pay no income taxes at all after benefiting from record amounts of tax credits, tax credits for children and so forth and so on. Six out of 10 households receive more in direct government payments, redistribution of wealth than they pay in all federal taxes.
Most Americans would be surprised to learn that in 2008, a study by “Economist” was done, and they found that the U.S. had the most progressive — meaning regressive — income tax system of any industrialized country at the time — any — and their studies showed that the top 10 percent of U.S. taxpayers paid a larger share of the tax burden than their counterparts in any other country, and our poorest taxpayers had the lowest income tax burden compared to poor taxpayers in every other country due to these refundable tax credits.
So you’ve been hearing big lies from Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and of course, Mr. Red himself, Bernie Sanders and I could go on and on and on.
Our Tax Code is built like a socialist tax code for massive redistribution of wealth, and the Democrats don’t think there’s enough of it, even though there’s more than in any other part of the industrialized planet.
Their tax proposal is to massively increase taxes on corporations, which will further kill manufacturing and production, prosperity and expansion in our country, and raise taxes on billionaires, billionaires which will get us nowhere, absolutely nowhere, and the redistribution of wealth continues.
So the Trump plan is a growth plan. The Democrat plan is a massive deficit, anti-American usurping of the American taxpayer, usurping of the American worker plan.
Follow Jeff Poor on X @jeff_poor
