President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have tried to link their 2017 tax cut package to the current strength of the American economy -- but so far, the tax cut law has remained unpopular with the general public.
James Pethokoukis, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, writes in The Week that the biggest problem with the GOP's tax cut law is that it hasn't so far done what many Republicans have claimed it would.
While the GOP predicted that the major corporate tax cut would lead to a boom in business investment in the United States, so far the opposite has happened.
"The third-quarter GDP report out last Friday showed business investment decelerating, not strengthening," Pethokoukis notes.
And what have businesses done instead with their windfalls? They've done what Democratic lawmakers predicted and have rewarded their shareholders with share buybacks and dividends that primarily help wealthy investors.
Pethokoukis also writes that Trump's trade wars are potentially hurting businesses' willingness to make big investments in the United States, while higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve may also be making capital more scarce than would otherwise be expected.
"If the tax cuts are perceived to be failing both politically and economically, Republicans have only themselves to blame," Pethokoukis concludes.
