Should-Read: Dean Baker: Doesn’t Anyone Care If the Trump Tax Cuts Are Working?

Should-Read: Dean Baker: Doesn’t Anyone Care If the Trump Tax Cuts Are Working?: “Capital goods orders for January…

…a hugely important early measure of the success of the Trump tax cuts. The ostensible rationale for the big cut in the corporate tax rate that was at the center of the tax cut is that it will lead to a flood of new investment…. If lower rates really produce a flood of investment we should at least begin to see some sign in new orders once the tax cut was certain to pass. The January report showed orders actually fell modestly for the second consecutive month…. Remarkably, these new data have gotten almost no attention from the media…

Dean Baker: Small Businesses Still Aren’t Impressed by the Republican Tax Cut: “The National Federation of Independent Businesses… 29 percent of businesses expect to make a capital expenditure in the next 3 to 6 months…

…somewhat higher than the 26 percent reported for February of 2017, but below the 32 percent reported for August of last year. It’s also the same as the 29 percent reading reported back in August of 2014 when a Kenyan socialist was in the White House…. There is no evidence here of any uptick in investment whatsoever and certainly not of the explosive increase promised by the Trump administration. Maybe if Trump did some more tweeting on the issue it would help…