On Friday, the Heritage Foundation hosted a panel of experts to discuss prospects for infrastructure policy during the Trump administration. You can watch the event on C‑SPAN.

I discussed why infrastructure activities should be devolved to the states and private sector, and why the Trump plan to subsidize equity investments in infrastructure is not a good approach.

There were numerous points of agreement on the panel, which included Michael Sargent of Heritage, Robert Puentes of the Eno Center, and Marc Scribner of CEI. We all favored greater private investment in traditionally public infrastructure, and we all agreed that the Trump administration should put a high priority on air traffic control reform this year.

I make the case for privatizing air traffic control in a new op-ed in The Hill.

President Trump created a stir by dismissing as “too complicated” the border adjustability feature in the House Republican corporate tax reform. Yet a few days later his press secretary Sean Spicer suggested the seemingly rejected border tax could pay for a Mexican border wall. 

Meanwhile, the President suggested the dollar is “too strong” even though (1) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross boasted about Trump having talking the Mexico peso down 35% and (2) Martin Feldstein and other economists pushing border adjustability predict that the plan would push the dollar 25% higher. 

To call border adjustability too complicated is starting to look like a huge understatement. 

In the House Republicans’ tentative “Better Way” plan, border adjustment means corporations could no longer treat expenses of imported materials, parts, or equipment as a cost doing business. Manufacturers of electrical machinery or plumbing parts could not deduct the cost of copper (36% of which is imported). Retailers could not deduct the cost of imported goods. Refiners would pay a 20% tax on crude oil from Canada.

Exports, by contrast, would not count as income for U.S. tax purposes. Big exporters might even qualify for a federal check. “Any border adjustment should include cash refunds for exporters,” writes economist Alan Viard. 

This “border adjustability” is said to be comparable to the way we exempt foreigners from our sales and excise taxes and other countries likewise exempt us from their equivalent value added taxes (VAT). But that analogy depends on treating a tax on corporate cash flow (essentially income minus expensed investments) as equivalent to a tax on sales. I plan to discuss the VAT analogy in a separate blog.

Tax Policy Center economist Bill Gale notes, “Many economists—but very few non-economists—believe that the international trade effects of border adjustments will be small.” Indeed, the architects of the House GOP plan, as well as potential winners and losers among business leaders, depict the House GOP tax proposal as an export incentive and import penalty. So does economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth who writes, “Border adjustability taxes are essentially tariffs under another name.” Carolyn Freund of the Peterson Institute likewise shows how a “Maryland-produced sweatshirt will face a lower tax rate than the Chinese-produced sweatshirt, exactly as if a tariff were applied.” Foreign trading partners will surely see it the same way. 

How can economists disagree? “In a simple textbook model,” explains Alan Viard, “a border adjustment would trigger a real increase in the value of the dollar that would raise the cost of U.S. exports and reduce the cost of U.S. imports by an amount that would exactly offset the direct effects of the border adjustment.”

This textbook model claims the so-called “destination-based cash-flow tax (DBCFT)” will not affect the U.S. trade deficit because, as Paul Krugman explains, “wages and/​or the exchange rate would change.” Rather than dealing with changing wages, border adjustment enthusiasts claim the real exchange rate of the dollar would supposedly rise “exactly” enough to make U.S. exports sufficiently expensive to foreigners to “exactly” offset the export subsidy. And the dollar prices of foreign imports would likewise fall by “exactly” the right amount to compensate for the importers’ extra 20% tax, neither more nor less. 

“If the dollar doesn’t rise quickly enough or high enough,” notes The Wall Street Journal, “a border-adjusted tax is expected to penalize big retailers and other large corporations reliant on lower-cost foreign production.” Even if we could be certain of the real exchange rate rising by 25%, past experience does not suggest that is likely to happen in fewer than four years, or that import prices would fall proportionately or uniformly.

As the graph shows, the broad trade-weighted measure of the dollar’s real exchange rate rose 27.5% from 1995 to 2002, but the GDP deflator for import prices fell just 8.3%. 

Be careful what you wish for. As Krugman notes, “there might be a lot of short-to-medium financial consequences from a stronger dollar.” Indeed. 

Recall 1981–85, when the real dollar also rose 27.1% from 1981 to 1985 and the GDP deflator for import prices also fell more modestly, by 12.1%. Deflation of dollar-based commodity prices proved so devastating to dollar-indebted LDCs that five major central banks made a concerted effort to push the dollar back down between the Plaza Accord of September 1985 and the Louvre Accord of February 1987.

Those who predict a border adjustable corporate tax will be exactly neutralized by exactly perfect changes in exchange rates and import prices seem to be saying it would have no effect on trade. That can’t be right. If it had no effect on trade, then it would have no effect on exchange rates. After all, the reason the dollar is assumed to rise is because (1) subsidizing exports will make foreigners demand more dollars to buy more U.S. exports, and (2) taxing imports will make dollars more scarce by shrinking U.S. imports. To argue that trade will not be affected in the long run, theorists must first agree that the balance of trade will indeed be greatly distorted in some undefined short or medium run. 

“Border adjustments do not distort trade,” write Alan Auerbach and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, “as exchange rates should react immediately to offset the initial impact of these adjustments.” 

Unfortunately, what “should” happen in a simple textbook model is not a plausible prediction of what will happen—immediately or otherwise. The tax-induced drop in imports would happen immediately, but any resulting change in exchange rates and prices would happen later.

How much later? Nobody says because nobody knows.

Any economist who asserts a predictable and tight connection between exchange rates and all import prices is substituting theory for facts. And any economist who could predict exchange rates would quickly become a billionaire by betting on foreign exchange futures.

The “Better Way” plan would allow firms to write-off the cost of new capital equipment immediately, but corporations would no longer be able to deduct interest expense. Firms with big debts are not necessarily the same firms with big capital investments, so this alone builds potential political conflict among interest groups supporting or opposing reform. Expensing and disallowing interest deductibility will be tricky bridges to negotiate. Trying to add border adjustability for direct taxes would be a bridge too far.

The corporate tax needs to be reduced more than it needs to be “reformed.” Holding a lower corporate tax rate hostage to complicated and divisive border adjustments could easily make it impossible for an overly-ambitious House GOP tax package to win the approval of business leaders, foreign trading partners or the U.S. Senate. 

Regardless of whether wall construction is funded through a discriminatory tariff on imports from Mexico or the border adjustment taxes envisaged in the GOP tax proposal, U.S. consumers and taxpayers will be flipping the bill. The very idea of building the wall in the first place is a disgrace, but demonizing our neighbors and hatching plans that could subvert the Mexican economy and put another Venezuela on our southern border, is belligerent and potentially disastrous.

Hitting all Mexican imports with a 20% tariff is, unfortunately, something the president could do. Under the Constitution, Congress is authorized to regulate foreign commerce, which includes imposing tariffs. But over the years, Congress has delegated some of that authority to the president through various statutes. All of those statutes require that some condition be met (findings of a surge in imports; subsidized imports; unfair foreign practices that hurt U.S. companies; national security crises; public health or safety threats, etc.) before restrictions can be imposed. Sometimes the restrictions are limited in magnitude and duration, sometimes not. Sometimes the actions are subject to judicial review, sometimes not.

By and large, these statutes were passed in conjunction with legislation to implement trade agreements, lower tariffs, or otherwise liberalize trade. They were crafted as safeguards to assuage those concerned that the country’s seemingly inexorable march toward free trade would bring rapid change, which would carry massive adjustment costs and other maladies and threats that the government would be incapable of addressing. The expectation was that the president would use this conditional power sparingly and in the service of greater openness and liberalization. In other words, unlike the Founding Fathers, U.S. Congresses during the 20th century failed to imagine adequately the likes of a Donald Trump as president.

There are a few statutes under which Trump could impose a 20% tariff on all Mexican imports and likely be within the letter of the law. The most probable statute is Section 232(b) of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which permits the president to impose duties in the event of a “national emergency.” This statute was invoked once before, by Nixon, in 1971 in response to a balance of payments crisis, involving Japan. Nixon imposed a 10% surcharge on Japanese imports under this law. Trump might claim that the loss of manufacturing jobs or the influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico is a national security crisis that justifies his invocation of this law, and imposition of the tariff. Whether the action would pass muster in a NAFTA panel or at the WTO is another matter. There has never been such a case – duties imposed to redress a national security crisis – brought to dispute settlement.

One thing is all but certain. If Trump acts in this manner, the Mexicans will most certainly retaliate. How all the king’s men don’t see the danger in this tack is what scares me the most.

Based on new 10-year fiscal estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, I wrote yesterday that balancing the budget actually is very simple with a modest bit of spending restraint.

If lawmakers simply limit annual spending increases to 1 percent annually, the budget is balanced by 2022.

If spending is allowed to grow by 2 percent annually, the budget is balanced by 2025. And if the goal is balancing the budget by the end of the 10-year window, that simply requires that spending grow no more than 2.63 percent annually.

I also pointed out that this wouldn’t require unprecedented fiscal discipline. After all, we had a de facto spending freeze (zero percent spending growth) from 2009–2014.

And in another previous column, I shared many other examples of nations that achieved excellent fiscal results with multi-year periods of spending restraint (as defined by outlays growing by an average of less than 2 percent).

Today, we’re going to add tax cuts to our fiscal equation.

Some people seem to think it’s impossible to balance the budget if lawmakers are also reducing the amount of tax revenue that goes to Washington each year.

And they think big tax cuts, such as the Trump plan (which would reduce revenues over 10 years by $2.6 trillion-$3.9 trillion according to the Tax Foundation), are absurd and preposterous.

After all, if politicians tried to simultaneously enact a big tax cut and balance the budget, it would require deep and harsh spending cuts that would decimate the federal budget, right?

Nope. Not at all.

They just need to comply with my Golden Rule.

Let’s examine the fiscal implications of a $3 trillion tax cut. If you look at CBO’s baseline revenue forecast for the next 10 years, the federal government is projected to collect more than $43 trillion during that decade. If you reduce that baseline by an average of $300 billion each year, receipts will still grow. Indeed, they’ll rise from $3.4 trillion this year to $4.8 trillion in 2027.

And since CBO is forecasting that the federal government this year will spend more than $3.9 trillion, we simply have to figure out the amount of spending restraint necessary so that outlays in 2027 don’t exceed $4.8 trillion.

That’s not a difficult calculation. It turns out that the American people can get a substantial $3 trillion tax and a balanced budget if politicians simply exercise a modest amount of fiscal discipline and limit annual spending increases to 1.96 percent annually.

In other words, if the crowd in Washington does nothing more than simply have government grow just a tiny bit less than the projected rate of inflation, lots of good things can be achieved.

P.S. I can’t resist pointing out yet again that we shouldn’t fixate on balancing the budget. The real goal should be to shrink the burden of federal spending so more resources are allocated by the productive sector of the economy. That being said, if lawmakers address the underlying disease of excessive spending, that automatically solves the symptom of red ink.

P.P.S. Higher taxes, by contrast, generally lead to higher deficits and debt.

The Christian Science Monitor thinks that the Democrats wrote their infrastructure plan as a “political bridge to President Trump.” Fox News thinks that Trump might “get on board” the Democrats’ plan. Statements like these show that many reporters–and by extension members of the public–haven’t yet figured out the real issues behind the infrastructure debate.

As Business Insider points out, there’s a bigger difference between the two sides over “how it’s paid for” than “what gets built.” The Democrats want the federal government to spend a trillion dollars, money it would have to borrow. Trump wants private investors to spend their own money. Never the twain shall meet. 

But Business Insider doesn’t understand how Trump’s idea will work. If Trump is going to rely on the private sector, it says, then only projects that generate revenue will be built because “projects that don’t generate revenue for the private sector generally don’t get financed.” But there are two kinds of public-private partnerships. The kind that Business Insider is writing about is called demand risk because the private partner takes the risk that tolls, fares, or other user fees won’t repay the cost.

The second kind is called availability payments because the government agrees to pay the private partner the cost of the project over time, whether or not anyone pays user fees or even uses it at all. In this kind, the public takes the risk. While I much prefer the demand-risk form because I think nearly all infrastructure ought to be paid for out of user fees, Trump may be happy to go with availability payments so long as state or local governments are making the payments, not the feds. Democrats in Congress don’t like either one because they short-circuit their ability to appear to give gifts to their constituents.

The third issue that many people don’t understand is the difference between Trump and the Democrats over jobs. The Democrats’ plan estimates that number of jobs that will be created by spending money on construction and maintenance. They used a simple formula: each billion dollars of spending generates 13,000 jobs (about $76,000 per job). Of course, they really mean job-years, and that formula works as well for digging holes and filling them up as for building roads or water lines.

Trump is less concerned about the immediate jobs than whether projects generate long-term benefits for the economy. Digging a hole and filling it up creates short-term jobs, but if there are no jobs after the project is done, it wasn’t worth it. A transportation improvement that generates new travel will generate jobs in the long term. A transportation project that merely substitutes one form of travel for another will generate few, if any, long-term jobs.

So there are three irreconcilable differences between Trump and the Democrats: where the money comes from in the short run (public vs. private); how it is financed in the long run (feds vs. state & local); and what kind of jobs they should shoot for (short-term vs. long-term). In short, while both sides talk about “trillion-dollar plans,” they mean very different things.

The new mayor of São Paulo is showing the way if President Trump wants to follow through on his “drain the swamp” pledge. According to today’s Wall Street Journal:

The multimillionaire star of the Brazilian version of “The Apprentice” TV show, who took over as São Paulo’s mayor this month, is set to embark on the biggest municipal privatization drive in the country’s history.

João Doria, who won a landslide victory in October and has drawn comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal he plans to sell off everything from São Paulo’s carnival venue to rights to the city’s cemeteries, aiming to raise more than 7 billion reais (about $2.2 billion).

The plan by the businessman-turned-mayor comes as Brazil looks to shrink its cumbersome and graft-ridden government apparatus in the wake of a vast corruption scandal that has destroyed voters’ faith in traditional politicians.

“The heavy role of the state is one of Brazil’s most serious problems—it is inefficient and it invites corruption,” said Mr. Doria.”

The problem is the same in the United States, and so is the solution.

The Congressional Budget Office, as part of The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027, has just released fiscal projections for the next 10 years.

This happens twice every year. As part of this biannual exercise, I regularly (most recently here and here) dig through the data and highlight the most relevant numbers.

Let’s repeat that process. Here’s what you need to know from CBO’s new report.

• Under current law, tax revenues over the next 10 years are projected to grow by an average of 4.2 percent each year.
• If left on autopilot, the burden of government spending will rise by an average of 5.2 percent each year.
• If that happens, the federal budget will consume 23.4 percent of economic output in 2027 compared to 20.7 percent of GDP in 2017.
• Under that do-nothing scenario, the budget deficits jumps to $1.4 trillion by 2027.

But what happens if there is a modest bit of spending restraint? What if politicians decide to comply with my Golden Rule and limit how fast the budget grows every year?

This shouldn’t be too difficult.

After all, even with Obama in the White House, there was a de facto spending freeze between 2009–2014. In other words, all the fights over debt limits, sequesters, and shutdowns actually yielded good results.

So if the Republicans who now control Washington are serious about protecting the interests of taxpayers, it should be relatively simple for them to adopt good fiscal policy.

And if GOPers actually decide to do the right thing, the grim numbers in the CBO’s new report quickly turn positive.

• If spending is frozen at 2017 levels, there’s a budget surplus by 2021.
• If spending is allowed to grow 1 percent annually, there’s a budget surplus by 2022.
• If spending is allowed to grow 2 percent annually, there’s a budget surplus by 2025.
• If spending is allowed to grow 2.63 percent annually, the budget is balanced in 10 years.
• With 2.63 percent spending growth, the burden of government spending drops to 18.4 percent of GDP by 2027.

To put all these numbers in context, inflation is supposed to average about 2 percent annually over the next decade.

Here’s a chart showing the overall fiscal impact of modest spending restraint.

By the way, it’s worth pointing out that the primary objective of good fiscal policy should be reducing the burden of government spending, not balancing the budget. However, if you address the disease of excessive spending, you automatically eliminate the symptom of red ink.

For more background information, here’s a video I narrated on this topic. It was released in 2010, so the numbers have changed, but the analysis is still spot on.

P.S. Achieving good fiscal policy obviously becomes much more difficult if Republicans in Washington decide to embark on a foolish crusade to expand the federal government’s role in infrastructure.

P.P.S. Achieving good fiscal policy obviously becomes much more difficult if Republicans in Washington decide to leave entitlement programs on autopilot.