Trump was reportedly inspired to hurry up his tax plan after reading a New York Times op-ed
(Donald Trump, then the president-elect, in the lobby of the New York Times building after a meeting on November 22.Reuters/Lucas Jackson)
It seems you can thank the opinion page of The New York Times for expediting the release of President Donald Trump's plan to overhaul the US tax code.
On Monday, Politico's Shane Goldmacher reported that Trump aides sometimes slip the president various news articles to help set his agenda.
Goldmacher reported that recently, one of those pieces was an April 19 op-ed article from The New York Times written by four high-profile conservative economists — Steve Forbes, Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore, and Arthur Laffer. It urged the GOP and Trump to hurry up and finish a tax-reform plan.
According to White House sources, the report said, Trump told his staff to come up with a tax plan after reading the story.
On April 21, Trump told the Associated Press that his tax plan would come out the following Wednesday.
Reports have suggested White House and Treasury officials were caught off guard by Trump's timeline. Instead of rolling out a full plan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the National Economic Council’s director, Gary Cohn, released a one-page summary of principles on April 26. The summary was light on details.
According to Moore, one of the authors of the op-ed article, White House officials said the Times piece helped inspired Trump to hasten the tax timeline.
"Several of the White House folks came up to us and said, 'It’s your op-ed that got Trump moving on this,'" Moore told Politico.
Read the full Politico report here»
More From Business Insider
