President Donald Trump may delay one of his campaign's chief economic promises until 2018, according to a report released earlier today (Feb. 23).
Citing Republican sources, Axios Media Co. claimed that the new POTUS will likely move his proposed $550 billion infrastructure spending plan back a year in order to address other policy issues his administration considers more pressing.
"There are an overwhelming number of reforms that the Trump team is pushing [first]," the reported stated.
Here's quick look at each one of these reforms the White House believes is more urgent...
3 Reforms Trump Now Considers Higher Priority Than a Capstone Economic Promise
1. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA): President Trump explained to CNBC yesterday that, before any other major reform is addressed, the repeal and replacement of Obamacare must come first:
"We're doing the healthcare -- again moving along very well -- sometime during the month of March, maybe mid-to-early March," the president told reporters Wednesday. "We'll be submitting something that I think people will be very impressed by."
Disagreement among congressional Republicans in recent weeks over how to replace the 2010 law have led to jeers from conservatives who expected to kill the law immediately and liberals who say the GOP doesn't have an adequate replacement plan.
GOP lawmakers have likewise been heckled by constituents at town hall meetings across America this month as they struggle to outline a clear and smooth path to a better system.
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The public's mounting concern -- as well as struggles within the GOP party itself -- over the future of U.S. healthcare is keeping ACA reform at the forefront of Washington's agenda.
And immediately following healthcare, Trump's administration intends to address major policy changes regarding this fiscal "thorn in the GOP's side" next...
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2. Tax reform: White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Trump's tax reform plan is expected in "the next couple weeks," reported The Washington Post that day.
But first, Congress and the Trump administration still need to pin down exactly what shape overall tax reform will take...
You see, the House Republicans' plan does not contain Trump's suggested 20% corporate tax rate (rather than the current 35%), nor does it include a controversial border tax adjustment that the president touted just about a month ago on Jan. 23.
Those specific portions of an overall tax reform plan will have to be sussed out first.
But President Trump echoed Spicer's timeline to CNBC yesterday, claiming that his tax reform policy changes can be expected in the very near future because they are "actually very well finalized."
3. Immigration reform: Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly directed immigration officers this past Tuesday to broaden the scope of their enforcement. This directive was in line with the president's most recent change to his overall immigration reform plan.
The Department of Homeland Security was ordered to "conduct more raids of immigrant communities, and detain people living [in the U.S.] illegally regardless of whether they had a criminal record," reported The Los Angeles Times on Feb. 21.
The Trump administration also declared an end to former President Barack Obama's "catch and release policy," on Tuesday, which originally came about in part because the government had nowhere to hold detainees waiting for immigration decisions. So they would "catch them" and "release them" onto U.S. soil.
One of the White House memos released Tuesday also "directed officials to expand detention facilities," claimed The Boston Globe on Feb. 22. "But it will take time to build centers big enough to hold the thousands of Mexican and Central American asylum seekers expected to cross the border this year," the outlet admitted.
Given the massive scope and undertaking of these three reform policies, it may not come as a surprise that Trump's economic promise to improve U.S. infrastructure won't be addressed until sometime in 2018.
Even the U.S.' new Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said as much to CNBC this morning. He claimed that the Trump team doesn't expect any sort of serious economic growth until "towards the end of next year."
Up Next
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"Repatriation" of U.S. corporations' offshore stash is going to be a huge driver of the next leg up I see coming. The Fortune 500 companies alone have $2.4 trillion parked overseas.
One company in particular has the biggest cash hoard of them all...