According to Economist Justin Wolfers, the tax, tariff, and budget policies of the Trump administration are creating one of the most lopsided transfers of wealth in U.S. history.
What Happened: On Thursday, in a post on X, Wolfers, a prominent critic of President Donald Trump, highlighted the regressive nature of the latter’s economic policies.
“Trump’s tax cuts overwhelmingly help the rich,” he says, referring to the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), would result in a 4% increase in resources for households in the highest decile by 2027, and a 2% decline for those at the lowest.
Wolfers adds that the spending cuts are primarily targeted at the poor, such as the stripping of 3.2 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food stamp program, aimed at cutting $295 billion in spending over the next decade.
To top it off, the “tariffs cost the poor a larger share of their income,” Wolfers says, calling the rolling of these three “regressive policies” together, one of the “largest redistribution from poor to rich in American history.”
Wolfers underscored his point with a chart titled “The budget bill passed by the House is anti-Robin Hood,” a visualization showing how the package would funnel benefits up the income scale and leave lower-income households worse off.
Why It Matters: Woflers has been a vocal critic of Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” since the very beginning, having said that “It’s just pure reverse Robin Hood,” a couple of weeks ago.
His concerns have since been echoed by several other leading analysts and experts, with Craig Shapiro, the Managing Partner at the Collabfund, saying that the bill will “explode the deficit while enriching the highest decile of Americans at the expense of the lowest decile.”
Even billionaire Elon Musk, a former Trump ally, has criticized the bill in recent weeks, calling it a “disgusting abomination,” resulting in a much-publicized fallout with the President.
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