The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a conservative center-right/right-wing think tank based in Washington, D.C., that researches government, politics, economics, and social welfare. AEI is an independent nonprofit organization supported primarily by contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals.
Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory postulating that economic growth can be most effectively fostered by lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. According to supply-side economics theory, consumers will benefit from greater supply of goods and services at lower prices, and employment will increase. Supply-side fiscal policies are designed to increase aggregate supply, as opposed to aggregate demand, thereby expanding output and employment while lowering prices. Such policies are of several general varieties:
- Investments in human capital, such as education, healthcare, and encouraging the transfer of technologies and business processes, to improve productivity. Encouraging globalized free trade via containerization is a major recent example.
- Tax reduction, to provide incentives to work, invest and take risks. Lowering income tax rates and eliminating or lowering tariffs are examples of such policies.
- Investments in new capital equipment and research and development (R&D), to further improve productivity. Allowing businesses to depreciate capital equipment more rapidly gives them an immediate financial incentive to invest in such equipment.
- Reduction in government regulations, to encourage business formation and expansion.
The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) is a United States agency within the Executive Office of the President established in 1946, which advises the president of the United States on economic policy. The CEA provides much of the empirical research for the White House and prepares the publicly-available annual Economic Report of the President. The council is made up of its chairperson and generally two to three additional member economists. Its chairperson requires appointment and Senate confirmation, and its other members are appointed by the President.
Arthur Betz Laffer is an American economist and author who first gained prominence during the Reagan administration as a member of Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981–1989). Laffer is best known for the Laffer curve, an illustration of the theory that there exists some tax rate between 0% and 100% that will result in maximum tax revenue for government. In certain circumstances, this would allow governments to cut taxes, and simultaneously increase revenue and economic growth.
Nicholas Gregory Mankiw is an American macroeconomist who is currently the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics.
James Kenneth Glassman served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from 2008 to 2009. From 2009 to 2013, he was the founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute, a public policy development institution focused on creating independent, nonpartisan solutions to America's most pressing public policy problems through the principles that guided President George W. Bush and his wife Laura in public life. The George W. Bush Institute is based within the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Lawrence B. Lindsey is an American economist and author. He was director of the National Economic Council (2001–2002), and the assistant to the president on economic policy for George W. Bush. Lindsey previously served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1991 to 1997, nominated to position by President George H. W. Bush. During his time with George W. Bush administration he played a leading role in formulating President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut plan, convincing candidate Bush that he needed an "insurance policy" against an economic downturn. He left the White House in December 2002 and was replaced by Stephen Friedman after a dispute over the projected cost of the Iraq War. Lindsey estimated the cost of the Iraq War could reach $200 billion, while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld estimated that it would cost less than $50 billion. The overall cost of the Iraq War has been estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be approximately $2.4 trillion.
Stephen Moore is an American conservative writer and television commentator on economic issues. He co-founded and served as president of the Club for Growth from 1999 to 2004. Moore is a former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board. He worked at The Heritage Foundation from 1983 to 1987 and again since 2014. Moore advised Herman Cain's 2012 presidential campaign and Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
Peter Kent Navarro is an American economist who served in the Trump administration, first as Deputy Assistant to the President and director of the short-lived White House National Trade Council, then as Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the new Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; he was also named the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator. He is a professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the Paul Merage School of Business of the University of California, Irvine, and the author of Death by China, among other publications. Navarro ran unsuccessfully for office in San Diego, California, five times. Navarro, who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, was the first former White House official ever imprisoned on a contempt-of-Congress conviction.
Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market is a 1999 book by syndicated columnist James K. Glassman and economist Kevin A. Hassett, in which they argued that stocks in 1999 were significantly undervalued and concluded that there would be a fourfold market increase with the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rising to 36,000 by 2002 or 2004. The bursting of the dot-com bubble of 2000, September 11 attacks in 2001, and the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 ensured that the titular target would not be attained within the author's suggested timeframe. It wasn't until 2021 when Dow 36,000 would be reached in actuality, 22 years after the book was published.
Tomas J. Philipson is a Swedish-born American economist who served as the Acting Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump administration. He departed from the position and the Council at the end of June, 2020, to return to the University of Chicago. He holds the Daniel Levin Chair in Public Policy at the University of Chicago, with posts in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Department of Economics, and the Law School. He was a Director of the Becker Friedman Institute at the university.
Jason Furman is an American economist and professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. On June 10, 2013, Furman was named by President Barack Obama as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Furman has also served as the deputy director of the U.S. National Economic Council, which followed his role as an advisor for the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign.
Lawrence Alan Kudlow is an American conservative broadcast news analyst, economist, columnist, journalist, political commentator, and radio personality. He is a financial news commentator for Fox Business and served as the Director of the National Economic Council during the Trump Administration from 2018 to 2021. He assumed that role after his previous employment as a CNBC television financial news host. By 2024 Kudlow was the vice chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank developing policies for the second Trump presidency.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is an American economist who is adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University and a columnist. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the United States Department of Transportation during the first Trump administration. She previously served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
The economic policy of the first Donald Trump administration was characterized by the individual and corporate tax cuts, attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), trade protectionism, deregulation focused on the energy and financial sectors, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018, Pub. L. 115–97 (text)(PDF), is a congressional revenue act of the United States originally introduced in Congress as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), that amended the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. The legislation is commonly referred to in media as the Trump tax cuts. Major elements of the changes include reducing tax rates for corporations and individuals, increasing the standard deduction and family tax credits, eliminating personal exemptions and making it less beneficial to itemize deductions, limiting deductions for state and local income taxes and property taxes, further limiting the mortgage interest deduction, reducing the alternative minimum tax for individuals and eliminating it for corporations, doubling the estate tax exemption, and reducing the penalty for violating the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to $0. The New York Times has described the TCJA as "the most sweeping tax overhaul in decades".
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. The first Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U.S.–China trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires transfer of American technology to China. In response to US trade measures, the Chinese government accused the Trump administration of engaging in nationalist protectionism and took retaliatory action. After the trade war escalated through 2019, in January 2020 the two sides reached a tense phase-one agreement. By the end of the Trump's first presidency, the trade war was widely characterized as a failure for the United States.
Casey B. Mulligan is an American economist and author. He is a Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. He served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump Administration from September 6, 2018 to August 2019.
Jennifer "DJ" Nordquist is an American public policy expert who served as the U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank, representing the U.S. as the largest shareholder at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), International Development Association (IDA), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).
