--- title: Trump Address Congress: Tax Reform Proposed description: President Trump called for creating a "level playing field" on U.S. exports in his first address to Congress Tuesday night. canonical: https://time.com/4686070/trump-address-congress-tax-reform/ author: Haley Sweetland Edwards article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-03-01T04:59:25.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T11:23:34.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: President Trump Called for a 'Level Playing Field.' That Could Mean This New Tax og:description: An innovative new tax aimed at imports and exports. og:url: https://time.com/4686070/trump-address-congress-tax-reform/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf1c3726c59250078/6988bc8097cdff1d7f6afa91/gettyimages-646441538.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4320 og:image:height: 2430 og:image:alt: Donald Trump Delivers Address To Joint Session Of Congress og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: President Trump Called for a 'Level Playing Field.' That Could Mean This New Tax twitter:description: An innovative new tax aimed at imports and exports. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltf1c3726c59250078/6988bc8097cdff1d7f6afa91/gettyimages-646441538.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # President Trump Called for a 'Level Playing Field.' 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=8a0a3fc8-c98f-4eba-9a11-30c5d1500d38&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Drawing out the Border Adjustment Tax [Watch (HLS stream): Drawing out the Border Adjustment Tax](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/3vCpE51K.m3u8) (4:14)  _Published 2017-02-28. TIME Correspondent Haley Sweetland Edwards draws out what you need to know about what could be Donald Trump's big tax plan._  by [Haley Sweetland Edwards](https://time.com/author/haley-sweetland-edwards/)  ## Haley Sweetland Edwards Updated: Dec 13, 2023 11:23 AM UTCPublished: Mar 1, 2017 4:59 AM UTC TIME Correspondent Haley Sweetland Edwards draws out what you need to know about what could be Donald Trump's big tax plan.  by [Haley Sweetland Edwards](https://time.com/author/haley-sweetland-edwards/)  ## Haley Sweetland Edwards Updated: Dec 13, 2023 11:23 AM UTCPublished: Mar 1, 2017 4:59 AM UTC **Correction appended, March 13, 2017** President Trump called for creating a “level playing field” on U.S. exports in [his first address](http://time.com/4686621/trump-congress-address-transcript/) to Congress Tuesday night, but he stopped short of explicitly endorsing a plan from Speaker Paul Ryan. Citing [a recent meeting with executives](http://time.com/4674846/president-trump-loves-roundtables-with-ceos-heres-why/) from Harley-Davidson, Trump told lawmakers that the American motorcycle company sometimes finds its products face high taxes when they are exported. “Currently, when we ship products out of America, many other countries make us pay very high tariffs and taxes — but when foreign companies ship their products into America, we charge them almost nothing,” he said. Trump said his “economic team” is developing a “historic tax reform” that would address that issue, but he did not say whether it would include Ryan’s plan, which is based on the [“Better Way Forward” blueprint](https://waysandmeans.house.gov/taxreform/). That plan hinges on an innovative new tax called the destination-based cash-flow tax with border adjustment—or just BAT, for short. It would lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, eliminate levies on all U.S. exports, and impose a 20% tax on imports. By shifting costs from U.S.-based exporters and strengthening the value of the U.S. dollar on the international market, the tax could earn as much as $1 trillion more in federal revenues over a decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis. Both Ryan and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady have said the BAT is the only way that Republicans can pass comprehensive tax reform. “It changes absolutely everything,” Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from central California who has long championed the reform effort, told TIME recently. “It’s a really, really big deal.” But the BAT also has really, really big enemies. The powerful retail industry’s lobby, backed by deep-pocketed conservative groups including Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, vehemently oppose the plan. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly equivocated. In January, Trump appeared to dismiss the plan, saying it was complicated and that he [didn’t “love it.”](https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-02-24/trump-signals-support-for-border-adjustment-tax-plan-pushed-by-house-republicans) But last week, he seemed to muddle into an endorsement, telling Reuters that he supported [“a form of tax on the border.”](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-tax-exclusive-idUSKBN1622J5) A day later, Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, [panned the BAT entirely](https://www.axios.com/trump-econ-advisor-no-go-on-house-border-adjustment-tax-2282642439.html). The truth is that understanding the BAT—and predicting its impact on the global economy—is complicated stuff. If normal tax rate adjustments are Econ 101, the BAT is a graduate-level seminar. The best thing about the BAT is that it essentially eliminates the current corporate tax code and replaces it with an new system. That’s good news for almost everyone—Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives alike—who believe the system we have now is broken. At 35%, the corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the developed world and yet, because of a tangle of loopholes and sweetheart exceptions, it produces less federal revenue, as a percent of GDP, than tax rates almost half its size. And then it gets worse: Because the current corporate tax is levied on profits, it creates incentives for companies to relocate their corporate headquarters, hide their intellectual property overseas, or otherwise perform feats of legal acrobatics. The current system is one of the main reasons marquee American companies, including Apple, Google, and General Electric, are sitting on trillions of dollars of cash abroad. That’s where the BAT, in theory, comes in to save the day. Instead of taxing profits, the BAT taxes only U.S.-based cash flow. That means that it doesn’t matter where a company’s headquarters are located or what its quarterly earnings report looks like. All that matters is where its goods are sold. Under the BAT, every company pays a 20% tax on what it makes from goods sold stateside. Companies can deduct capital, like machines and factory overhead, and U.S.-based labor expenses. But that’s it. They can’t deduct the cost of imports. If a company sells goods sold in America, it pays the 20% U.S. corporate tax rate. If it sells goods abroad, it doesn’t. If a company makes a T-shirt in Oklahoma and sells it in California, it deducts its capital and labor expenses, and then pays 20% on what it made from that T-shirt. If a company imports a T-shirt from China and sells it in California, then it doesn’t get to deduct the cost of the imported T-shirt (just its capital and other U.S.-based labor expenses). But it too pays 20% on what it made from that T-shirt. If a company makes a T-shirt in Oklahoma and sells it in France, it pays no U.S. corporate tax at all. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Which is why big net-exporters, like Boeing and GE, [stand to gain from the new tax](http://fortune.com/2017/02/03/ge-boeing-oracle-republican-bo…), while net-importers, including big box retailers like Walmart and Target, [do not](https://keepamericaaffordable.com/content.aspx?page=media). While Boeing would suddenly pay 0% tax on the airplanes that it exports, Walmart would see a new tax bill on every product it imports. Since most American retailers would not be able to switch quickly to domestic sources, which don’t currently exist, the National Retail Federation argues that its members would have no choice but to pass on new costs to consumers. That, in turn, would force retailers out of business and drive up the cost of everything from baby formula to avocados. Americans for Affordable Products, a coalition of retailers and other opponents of the BAT, estimates that if it passes, it will cost American households up to $1,700 a year in higher consumer prices. “I think we need to be realistic about what a huge risk this is for our economy,” David French, the senior vice president for government relations for the National Retail Federation, told TIME. But that’s not the end of the story. Economists on both sides of the ideological aisle argue that if the BAT passes, it will likely catalyze an increase in the value of the U.S. dollar. If the dollar gets stronger, imports will get cheaper, which means any increase in consumer prices will disappear. Which means both exporters and importers end up more or less back where they started. “It comes down to supply and demand,” said Larry Lindsay, the former director of the National Economic Council under George W. Bush. If we impose what amounts to a 20% subsidy on exports, he explains, our exports would get cheaper on the global market, which would drive up demand for U.S. exports and increase the value of the dollar. Alan Auerbach, an economist at Berkeley who wrote [a 2010 paper on the BAT](https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2010/12/pdf/auerbachpaper.pdf) for the left-leaning Center for American Progress, follows a similar path of logic, estimating that the tax could result in the value of a dollar shooting up by roughly 25%. In other words, if economic theory plays out as it does in the textbook models, Boeing and GE see a short term boon, but that’s it. When the dollar got stronger, their products would get more expensive on the global market, and demand would go down. Target and Walmart, for their part, would weather a short term hit, but that’s it, too. When the dollar got stronger, the products they import would get cheaper ($1 would buy more Chinese widgets), and their products would end up costing the same as they always have. That’s the theory, at least. Those in favor of the BAT argue that it’s worth taking the risk. The BAT, they argue, would leave us with a cleaner, simpler tax code with a lower rate and fewer loopholes. And since it would shift the tax burden, at least in part, to foreign producers, it would result in a lower tax rate and, as the CBO pointed out, $1 trillion in revenue over a decade. Those who oppose the BAT say that’s not a good enough reason to put the U.S. economy on the line. The global market is much more complicated than a textbook model, after all. How long would it take for the dollar to adjust? How many mom-and-pop retailers would wither and die in the meantime? How much of a price increase could U.S. consumers endure? More dramatically, those who oppose the BAT say that it could very easily spark a devastating trade war. If our trade partners see it as a protectionist tariff—which, in fairness, is [how President Trump has appeared to talk about it](http://fortune.com/2017/01/26/donald-trump-wall-mexico-tax/) in the past—what’s to stop them from imposing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports? Or restricting their investors from investing in U.S. companies? Trade experts also raise the specter that the World Trade Organization could find the BAT to be a protectionist tax policy, which would mean that other countries could impose sanctions on the U.S. This pitched controversy is probably one reason President Trump declined to explicitly endorse or condemn Ryan’s proposed tax reform plan Tuesday night. After all, all Americans can agree with championing a tax code that’s fair to everyone. The nitty-gritty details on how we get there makes for a less interesting show. **Correction**: The original version of this story misstated the name of a retail trade group. It is the National Retail Federation, not the U.S. Retail Federation. The story also misstated David French’s title. He is senior vice president for government relations for the National Retail Federation. ## Transcript [00:01] We will have strong borders and we will have the wall [00:05] and Mexico will pay for the wall. [ APPLAUSE ] Mexico [00:10] will pay for the wall, believe me. So you may have [00:12] heard Trump say something about Taxing Mexican [00:15] imports to pay for the border wall. That's probably not [00:18] gonna happen but what we think he was talking about [00:21] was a little something called the border adjustment [00:22] tax. Is really complicated and sometimes to help me [00:26] understand really complicated topics I will doodle them [00:29] out. My name is Haley Sweetland Edwards and I'm a [00:31] policy correspondent at Time Magazine. [ MUSIC ] [00:38] So there are four steps to understanding the border [00:40] adjustment tax. The first step is just the basics and as [00:44] it lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 % to 20 % [00:48] percent. It's a big deal. The second thing it does is, it [00:52] doesn't tax exports but it taxes imports. That's a big [00:56] change from what we have now. And the third thing is [00:59] that it doesn't tax corporate profits. It Taxes corporate [01:02] cash flow, which is a slightly different thing, it means [01:06] that it longer matters where your corporate [01:08] headquarter is, you can have your corporate [01:10] headquarters in Ireland, you can have it in [01:12] Netherlands, you can have it in the Bahamas it doesnt [01:15] matter, its only taxed when you sell things and where [01:18] you sell things. So if you sell your goods in the US it's [01:21] taxed at twenty percent. If you sell them abroad it's [01:25] not subject to a US corporate tax. Step two. What's [01:29] it mean for different companies? If you make your stuff [01:32] in the US and you sell your stuff in the US your only [01:35] going to see your Straight fall. It will fall from 35 % to [01:39] 20 %. If you import your stuff from abroad and you're [01:42] a major importer like Walmart or Target then your [01:46] gonna see a 20 % tax on everything you import. That's [01:50] a big difference. If you're the kinda of company that [01:53] makes their stuff here Like Boeing, and export most of [01:57] it. You're gonna pay 0 % on everything that you export. [02:02] And that's a huge boon to those companies. All right, [02:05] so step 3. Don't fall asleep on me here. This is where [02:08] the economic theory kicks in. Economists, both liberals [02:13] and conservatives, believe that this kind of tax, [02:16] according to the textbooks, should make the US dollar [02:18] stronger. And if that happens, that mean that imports [02:22] Would get less expensive. One US dollar would buy [02:25] more imports than it did before, and that would offset [02:29] the impact of this tax. Companies like Walmart and [02:32] Target, they would have to weather this first stage, but [02:34] then it would even out. A lot of economists also [02:37] disagree with that. They think the dollar wouldn't get [02:39] strong enough to offset Set the tax. And others worry [02:42] that it would just wreak havoc on the world market, [02:45] because so other currencies rely on the strength or [02:48] weakness of the US dollar. Okay, step four. Global [02:52] impact. Now we really don't know if this has a chance [02:55] of passing, but if it does then it has some major [02:58] implications on the global stage. One problem is just [03:02] rhetoric. If president Trump is gonna talk about this [03:05] tax as slapping tariffs on other countries' imports, then [03:09] that has the possibility of triggering a trade war. [03:12] Meaning other countries are gonna slap retaliatory [03:14] tariffs on our exports. [ MUSIC ] The other issue at [03:17] stake here is how the World Trade Organization sees [03:20] this tax. If they see it as protectionist, they can slap [03:23] sanctions on the U. S. And while a whole bunch of other [03:26] countries have taxes that are very similar to this. The [03:29] way that politicians have talked about this proposal [03:32] sounds pretty protectionist. So whether or not this tax [03:36] passes now, you're still gonna be hearing about it for a [03:38] really Really long time. It's been around since the [03:41] 1970's. It will keep cropping up. And that's because [03:43] corporate tax in America is broken. It's one of the [03:46] highest taxes in the developed world, and it doesn't [03:49] bring in the revenue that it should. This tax for all [03:54] of it's flaws fixes a lot of those problems. It gets rid of [03:55] loopholes, it eliminates the incentive. For corporations [03:58] to hide their headquarters in other countries. And it's [04:01] one of the only ways to make comprehensive tax [04:04] reform revenue. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4686070/trump-address-congress-tax-reform/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4686070/trump-address-congress-tax-reform/"},"headline":"President Trump Called for a 'Level Playing Field.' 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