During the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton told Donald Trump that she calls his economic plan “Trumped Up Trickle Down,” a reference to the “trickle down” theory. The comment was seen on Twitter as Clinton’s first zinger of the debate and quickly trended on Twitter. It came after Trump suggested that his economic plan would keep jobs from leaving to Mexico.
The exchange began with Trump telling moderator Lester Holt that he’s going to be a “job creator like we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan.” He explained that, under his plan, companies will be flocking back to the U.S.
“Companies will come. They will build,” Trump said. “They will expand. New companies will start. And I look very, very much forward to doing it. We have to renegotiate our trade deals, and we have to stop these countries from stealing our companies and our jobs.”
Clinton responded:
Well, I think that trade is an important issue. Of course, we are 5 percent of the world’s population; we have to trade with the other 95 percent. And we need to have smart, fair trade deals.
We also, though, need to have a tax system that rewards work and not just financial transactions. And the kind of plan that Donald has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. In fact, it would be the most extreme version, the biggest tax cuts for the top percent of the people in this country than we’ve ever had.
I call it trumped-up trickle-down, because that’s exactly what it would be. That is not how we grow the economy.
We just have a different view about what’s best for growing the economy, how we make investments that will actually produce jobs and rising incomes.
Later during the debate, Trump insisted that his tax cuts and economic plan will inspire businesses to hire within the U.S. Meanwhile, Lily L. Batchelder of New York University School of Law published an analysis of Trump’s tax plan, which estimates that around 20 percent of households with minor children and over half of single parents would pay more taxes than they do now.
Trump aide Stephen Miller told CNNMoney that the analysis was “entirely fraudulent” and didn’t consider everything in his tax plan.
Clinton also insisted that “trickle down” economics lead to the 2008 economic downturn. “Trickle-down did not work. It got us into the mess we were in, in 2008 and 2009. Slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn’t worked,” she said.