President-elect Trump’s onetime White House adviser Steve Bannon said in an interview he supports increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
"I’m for a dramatic increase in corporate taxes. We have to increase taxes on the wealthy. For getting our guys’s taxes cut, we’ve got to cut spending, which they’re gonna resist. Where does the tax revenue come from? Corporations and the wealthy,” Bannon said during an interview with Semafor that was published Friday.
“And when they start squealing, we have a conversation,” the conservative media personality added. “We’re all partners in this, everybody’s going to take a little pain, but the working people are going to take less pain than you guys."
On the campaign trail, Trump, Bannon’s former boss, said he wants to extend many provisions in his 2017 tax legislation, his signature economic achievement during his first White House term. He also vowed to slash taxes on tips and Social Security. Trump has also shown support for dropping the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent.
The incoming president also said he would impose tariffs on goods coming into the country as a way to bolster domestic manufacturing and greater investment in American jobs.
Bannon reiterated his strong support for some of those economic proposals during the interview.
“On the economic side, it is things like taking on tech, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, and driving the benefits to working people, to the middle class,” he said when discussing populism on the right. “Over the last 30 or 40 years, if you look at total returns from productive activity, more returns have gone to capital than have gone to work.”
The “Bannon’s War Room Podcast” host shared a similar stance on taxing the wealthy and corporations while addressing GOP supporters at the New York Young Republican Club annual gala this past weekend.
"And — I hate to say it, you're gonna have populous tax cuts — on no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax — no tax on overtime. To make up that gap, I hate to say this, I know it, you got a bunch of still Republican orthodox folks out here. You're gonna have to raise taxes on the wealthy,” Bannon said Sunday.
"Hey. Both parties got us into this,” he added. “Only the populist nationalists could get it out. But you know what? The neoliberal neocons are going to have to pay for what happened."
Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) agreed with Bannon’s stance on increasing taxes on companies and wealthy individuals.
“Bannon is absolutely right that we should tax stock buybacks and corporations more and that executives sucked up this money for shareholders instead of building new factories,” Khanna wrote in a Friday post on social platform X. “Thats the story of Intel and Boeing.”
