A Conservative perspective

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Photo from NBC News

When I first started writing this article, I supported getting Donald Trump into the White House. After his recent non-excusable comments on women, though, I can no longer support him, but rather only his conservative views.

Trump’s economic policies are vastly different from current economic policies. Trump’s tax policy will lower taxes for all Americans.
The top income bracket would be lowered from 39% to 33%, and all of the other tax brackets to twelve and 25%. With the median family income in Vernon Hills being $123,806, Trump’s policies would benefit many residents. For married couples making $75,000+, but less than $225,000, Trump’s tax plan would put them in an income tax bracket of 25%.

In addition to his personal income tax policies, Trump is also looking to change the corporate tax policies. He plans to reduce the business tax rate from 35% to 15%. By cutting taxes for all businesses, Trump hopes to bring jobs back into the U.S.. Trump hopes to make the cost of doing business decrease so companies will be less likely to have to send jobs overseas or cut them to make a profit.

MedTronic, a Fortune 500 company that makes medical devices. This company moved its headquarters from Minneapolis to Ireland. When they moved to Ireland, their business tax rate decreased 12.5% from 39.6% in the U.S.

In addition to cutting the business tax, Trump supported raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour. This will help many Americans, because the real (adjusted for inflation) minimum wage has not increased. This is not an huge raise, which would certainly cost many jobs. A minimum wage of $10 an hour would give America a good starting point. This slight increase from the current minimum wage will test the waters to see how prices and the economy would react.

One idea that Trump and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (D) agree on is trade. Both Trump and Sanders believe that America needs to rework its trade deals with other countries, particularly with China and Mexico.

In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was put into place. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is another proposed free trade agreement that the U.S. has yet to ratify in Congress.

The TPP, like NAFTA, seeks to eliminate trade barriers between the U.S. and 11 other countries located around the Pacific Ocean. While these are large, well-known free trade agreements, the U.S. also has free trade agreements with a total of 20 countries.

The idea behind free trade agreements is to promote the movement of goods across international borders. Many see it as a way to grow American businesses by expanding their market. While the elimination of tariffs makes it easier to send goods to other countries, it also gives American companies better incentive to send jobs out of the U.S.

Trump wants to change the trade deals the U.S. has with other countries by increasing tariffs on goods that are made in other countries to make it more expensive for American companies to produce goods in a foreign country. By raising the cost of importing goods, Trump hopes to encourage American companies to keep jobs in the U.S.
While Trump is certainly a loose cannon when it comes to foreign policy, I do agree with his basic principles. The U.S. has Congress to make sure that nothing too extreme comes to fruition.

Trump’s main ideas on foreign policy include making other countries in NATO pay their fair share, increasing border security, and overhauling the immigration vetting system.

One of the conditions of NATO is that all participating countries must spend at least two percent of their GDP on NATO. Of the 28 countries in NATO, only five of the countries are meeting that condition: U.S., Greece, Estonia, United Kingdom, and Poland. Trump believes that the U.S. needs to make the other 23 countries in NATO pay their two percent.

Another one of Trump’s main principles is strengthening the borders of the U.S. This includes two phases: extreme vetting of people coming in from Middle Eastern countries and strengthening the border with Mexico.

The extreme vetting of people coming in from Middle Eastern countries, particularly from war-torn Syria, is an adjustment of Trump’s original plan.
Trump’s original plan was to impose a temporary ban on people coming in from Muslim countries, but now it has evolved into extreme vetting. This is in response to fears from many that despite most of the people coming in being good, hard-working people, terrorists will try to take advantage of the system and sneak in.
Leaders in both the FBI and the CIA have warned about the dangers of continuing to allow Syrian refugees into the country with our current screening process. Trump believes the process for screening them needs to be improved.

Trump believes safe zones needs to be set up in other Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia, which has a large amount of wealth from oil, that can be easily used to help the Syrian refugees rather than using the hard earned money of Americans to help settle them here. Saudi Arabia ends up funneling most of the money in their country to the top which spends it on luxuries like yachts.
America doesn’t exactly have excess economic resources to help settle refugees in the U.S.

The second part of Trump’s border security enhancements is the southern border with Mexico. While Trump’s plan to “build a wall” is extreme and expensive, increased border security is needed.
Dangerous drug cartels control much of Mexico. These cartels prefer to sell their drugs in the U.S. because people will pay much more for them. It is estimated that Mexican drug cartels make up to $29 billion a year from sales in the U.S.. 80-90% of the foreign drugs in the U.S. come from Mexico.
While all drugs cannot be stopped, increasing border security will do more to stop the flow of drugs into the U.S.. Trump has even received the endorsement of the National Border Patrol Council. This organization represents the nearly 17,000 border patrol agents in the U.S.

I believe America is heading in the wrong direction as of now and a conservative leader would represent a change that would hopefully put the country back on the right track.