If the Republican Party were a factory, perhaps its only reliably produced widget would be regressive tax legislation. During Trump’s first term, his tax law — the main legislative achievement prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — primarily benefited the wealthy, with the astronomically rich realizing the greatest gains. 

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the top 1% of taxpayers were expected to pay about $61,000 less in taxes on average as a result of the law, and the top 0.1% could expect an average of about $252,000 in tax savings. By contrast, the bottom 60% of tax filers were expected to average less than $1,000 in relief — with the bottom 20% averaging a paltry $70 in tax savings.  

Expert analysis shows that making Trump’s first term tax cuts permanent would exacerbate wealth inequality and mainly benefit the richest people in the United States. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that if Congress made the 2017 law permanent “the richest 1 percent of Americans would receive $44.1 billion in tax cuts” as a class, and would benefit from “an average tax cut of nearly $26,000.” As with the 2017 bill, the bottom 60% would save about $1,000 or less per year.

Large corporations also laughed all the way to the bank. A separate ITEP report found that Trump’s 2017 cuts meant that the country’s “largest, consistently profitable corporations saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent.” That same group of 296 firms saved a cool $240 billion in taxes from 2018 to 2021 relative to what they would have paid absent Trump’s giveaway.

Now, as Trump’s tariff policies threaten the domestic and international economy, Fox News appears determined to ensure the richest people in the country continue to benefit at the expense of working people.

All signs suggest that the eventual tax policy Trump and congressional Republicans enact will be a boon for the wealthy. Still, several Fox News figures reacted with horror to leaks from the White House that the president was potentially considering an increase in tax rates for top earners. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been pushing to let the tax cuts expire for those in high-income brackets, and some within the White House have argued in favor of raising taxes on people who take home more than $1 million per year. 

That outcome was always exceedingly unlikely — Trump put the notion to bed during a recent Oval Office presser —  but even a whiff of progressive taxation was too much for Fox pundits.

On April 15 — Tax Day — Fox Business host and former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared on Special Report With Bret Baier and offered a familiar argument against raising taxes on the wealthy.

“I thought the Republicans wanted to reward success, not punishing it,” Kudlow said. “This loose talk about a higher top — another new bracket for millionaires — I don’t think it’s a crime to be a millionaire by the way, small businesses would pay this top bracket. I do not understand this.” 

“I can't believe Mr. Trump is going to go along with this,” Kudlow added. “He campaigned on, you know, extending his tax cuts.”

The same day, Kudlow appeared on America Reports and argued that Trump wouldn’t see any political benefit from raising top marginal rates. “You could raise the top rate 20 points, not three, and Democrats would still say ‘tax cuts for the rich.’” 

He went on to praise Republican leaders for opposing the idea. “Here’s the good news — Speaker Johnson is holding firm and Majority Leader Steve Scalise is holding firm, and we think John Thune in the Senate is holding,” Kudlow said. “That’s the good news.”

Two days later on The Five, host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery interrupted her own monologue criticizing Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) “Fight Oligarchy” tour to defend the oligarchs in question. “Rich people pay plenty in taxes,” Kennedy Montgomery exclaimed. “The idea that rich people don’t pay any money is a myth.” 

“They are getting fleeced,” she added. 

They are not. Research from University of California, Berkeley, professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that in 2018, following Trump’s tax cut, the 400 richest families were taxed at a lower rate than the bottom 50% of households.  

On April 18, Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones similarly advised the White House to support cuts for corporations. “There’s also some talk on the Capitol Hill, and I hope the Republicans don’t get behind this, of not giving the corporate tax rate quite a cut,” Jones said.   

“That can’t happen,” Jones added. “That was a campaign promise that everybody was — including the businesses. You’ve got to balance it out with these tariffs as well. Some of these companies are going to be hit hard in these first couple of years. You’ve got to give them a break.”

Jones was channeling another main talking point at Fox, namely that Trump’s across-the-board tariffs — which he later pulled back, at least temporarily — required tax cuts to even out the economic turmoil.

Even before Trump announced his quarter-baked tariff plan on April 2, dubbed “Liberation Day,” Fox News figures were expressing anxiety about a possible recession.

“We are sliding towards a recession,” contributor Newt Gingrich said on March 3.

“To power your way out of that bad economy, you need deregulation and tax cuts, and you need them in May, June, at the very latest the 4th of July so they have effect in 2026,” Ginrich added.    

As the Liberation Day policies freed Wall Street balance sheets of more than $6 trillion in wealth during what the Wall Street Journal called an “epic two-day rout,” talking heads at Fox grew more concerned.

Fox Business host Stuart Varney warned that China and other countries could “gang up on America,” and that “there’s also a danger of recession” due to the tariffs, according to former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen.

“Personally, I think the stakes are extremely high.” Varney said, before calling for more deregulation and increased fossil fuel extraction. “I think the presidency rests on tariffs, on tax cuts, red tape, and cheap energy.” 

Fox Business host Brian Brenberg acknowledged that an “exogenous thing” could cause a recession, but argued that if the White House gets “this tax cut done” and “they give us a tariff policy people can understand and creates an on-ramp for companies, rather than a light switch kind of thing, if they can do those two things I don't think we are going to get recession.”

“In fact, by the second half of the year you could see stronger growth, but you’ve got to put those pieces in place.”  

Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore argued on Fox that congressional Republicans need to advance a budget with tax cuts immediately to calm the market.

“Investors are nervous about the tariffs, but they’re also nervous about whether this tax cut is actually going to happen,” Moore said. “Remember, there would be a $4 trillion tax increase on January 1 if it doesn’t happen, so getting it done in a speedy way is really good for America.”

As legendary former UCLA football coach Red Sanders might’ve said if he were a Fox pundit: Markets aren’t everything; they’re the only thing.

Moore wasn’t the only person at Fox who wanted to see Trump’s tax cuts extended to steady tumultuous stock and bond markets. 

On April 11, Fox News host Jesse Watters praised Trump for his attempts to “isolate China” through his trade policy, and promised that “the market will boom once Congress passes tax and spending cuts.”

Watters’ attempts to reassure his audience came on the Friday of what ABC News referred to as “one of the most volatile weeks in Wall Street history.”

The following Monday, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy argued Congressional Republicans are “banking on that one big, beautiful bill with tax cuts is going to turn around the market.”

“The market has not been heading the right direction in the last month or so, and so they need it to turn around,” he continued.

On April 22, as the White House insisted it was making progress with bilateral trade deals around the world, Moore again argued tax cuts would send equity prices soaring.

“Once those deals are established, I think the market will go up,” Moore said. “But my advice to the president — get these done quickly, Mr. President, we’ve got to get this market back up, and get the tax cut done.”

“You get those two things done, I think you’re going to see the bull market of all time,” he continued.

Another recurring argument at Fox is that the Trump tax cuts helped the middle class, while eliding that the very wealthy were the real beneficiaries of Trump’s largesse.

On April 11, co-host Katie Pavlich argued that Democrats “want to vote for tax hikes at the end of the year by not supporting the renewal of the Trump tax hikes, which gave 80% of this country a tax break.” (Pavlich seemed to inadvertently call Trump’s tax cut a tax hike.)

Three days later, Moore claimed that the tax cuts are “good for American families — remember, the average family is facing a $3,000 tax increase if we don’t get this done.” (The Tax Policy Center’s findings show that if the cuts are allowed to expire, the cost to the bottom 60% of tax filers is still less than about $1,000.) 

On April 18, Fox & Friends highlighted aspects of Trump’s 2017 law that lowered taxes for households making less than $200,000, while failing to mention the benefits for higher income families. 

“Don’t you think releasing data like this goes against everything what the mainstream media, as well as a lot of the progressives are saying — which is, the tax cut was only for the rich,” co-host Lawrence Jones said. 

Jones’ co-host Brian Kilmeade offered his own version of this argument back in 2024, and it was equally misleading then.

The formula for tax policy at Fox is simple: tax cuts, especially for the wealthy and corporations, are necessary, and from there you work backwards. 

That long-standing approach is exemplified in a Fox & Friends segment from Trump’s first term, complete with former co-host and current Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Before Covid-19, sellers’ inflation, or Trump’s second term tariff spasms, the gang argued that taxes on the extremely wealthy should be about 17% or so, with the absolute top rate capped at 33%. 

At the time, the top marginal tax rate was 37%, as it remains today. From 1951 to 1963, arguably the era that MAGA is most nostalgic for, the top marginal income tax rate was over 90%. So contrary to Fox’s claims, the rich are not getting fleeced, but the network is pulling wool over its audience’s eyes.