In a rambling, drawn-out speech at the Detroit Economic Club on October 10, former President Donald Trump proposed yet another pandering tax cut: making car loan interest fully tax deductible, which he baselessly claimed would “stimulate massive domestic auto production and make car ownership dramatically more affordable.” Multiple experts explained that this would likely mostly benefit high-income tax filers, yet Fox News is calling this part of a “working man’s agenda.”

Fox promotes Trump’s proposal to deduct auto loan interest as part of a “working man’s agenda”

On the October 10 edition of Fox’s The Five, co-host Jeanine Pirro promoted Trump's car loan deduction policy along with other supposedly “game-changing ideas” like tax cuts he’s proposed for tips and Social Security benefits. Co-host Jesse Watters claimed Trump has “been very surgical with the way he's going after the voters with tax cuts” and “he’s focused on the working man.”

The next morning, during the October 11 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy said that Trump “revealed he has a new idea to stimulate the auto business,” and co-host Brian Kilmeade suggested it could have “ripple effects” that “could go all the way up the ladder.” Co-host Lawrence Jones boasted that Trump is “trying to blow up the whole tax code,” adding, “It’s to the benefit of the American worker and the American business.” Doocy also highlighted some of Trump’s other tax cut proposals, such as not taxing overtime pay.

Later that day on Fox’s Outnumbered, co-host and former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany framed “the Trump economic plan” as “the working man’s economic agenda,” listing “no tax on tips, it’s no tax on overtime, it’s no tax on car loan interest,” and more. She concluded: “It is a holistic agenda that would directly serve the working man and woman in this country.”

Trump’s proposal would most likely benefit the rich

Besides the reality that auto industry employment under the Biden-Harris administration is at a nearly 20 year high and auto workers’ wages have soared, as the Detroit Free Press reported, Trump’s proposal would actually benefit only a few Americans:

Assuming the proportion of taxpayers doing standard deductions stays constant, nearly 90% of taxpayers would get no benefit from Trump's proposed tax policy change, but the few who do benefit are likely to be wealthy people already doing itemized deductions. 

According to the Tax Policy Center, “high-income taxpayers are much more likely to itemize than others,” and in 2020, “nearly two-thirds of tax returns reporting adjusted gross income (AGI) over $500,000 itemized deductions, compared with 11 percent of those with AGI between $50,000 and $100,000 and two percent of those with AGI under $30,000.”

Economists Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research and Ernie Tedeschi of the Yale Budget Lab made similar points that the majority of people likely wouldn’t benefit from Trump’s proposed tax giveaway to car buyers.

Trump has floated fake populist proposals that shift higher tax burdens to the poor and middle class, while giving benefits to the rich

Experts have pointed out that Trump’s various tax cut proposals are designed to fool people into thinking that the cuts would help the majority of Americans, when in reality they’re thinly-disguised giveaways to the rich.

Approx. 100% of this campaign's tax policy ideas are built around voters not understanding tax incidence. https://t.co/8JLucP0PoW

— Brian Galle (@BDGesq) October 10, 2024

Trump's just throwing darts at the populist-pandering dart board. Economic coherence be damned.

If you demand all your current federal spending (or more) but also believe all taxes are illegitimate, Trump is your guy. The self-described “King of Debt.” https://t.co/YNkdh9O72V

— Brian Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 (@Brian_Riedl) October 10, 2024

These are all pieces of a plan to gradually replace the income tax with taxes on imported goods--the most objectively regressive tax change you could imagine.https://t.co/4zcj1NmFFe https://t.co/E3g4shXXaP pic.twitter.com/1isQtGynfe

— Brendan Duke (@Brendan_Duke) October 10, 2024

One example of this is Trump’s promise to end taxation of tips. As the Center for American Progress explained in a review of a similar proposal from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), such a policy “would leave out the more than 95 percent of low- and moderate-wage workers who are not in tipped occupations. And in many cases, the tax cuts it would provide low- and moderate-wage tipped workers would be small or nonexistent.” 

CAP further explained that this legislation “contains few, if any, guardrails to prevent high-income professionals such as hedge fund managers from shifting their compensation to a tax-free tipping model. Given the difference in tax rates, the tax breaks from exempting part of these high earners’ income from income taxes would be far larger than any tax breaks for lower-income workers.”

Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits would also primarily benefit the most wealthy seniors and provide no benefit to about half of Social Security beneficiaries, given that taxes on Social Security are progressive in nature and higher-earning seniors pay more. This specific proposal has the added harm of hastening the insolvency of both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.