Former President Trump has vowed to protect Social Security, similar to President Biden. However, while Biden focuses on increasing revenue from higher income earners, Trump may look to fund Social Security through tariffs and trade programs. Trump's stance suggests no cuts to benefits but potentially utilizing alternative funding mechanisms like tariffs to address the looming shortfall.
Transcript:The Social Security program is the largest single item in the annual federal government budget, accounting for roughly one fifth of every dollar spent.Austin, we've talked about what this could look like on the Democratic side of this imminent election, but now we want to look at the Republican side.What would happen to a potential Social Security shortfall that could be as quickly as a decade away if Trump were to get a second presidency?Yeah.So, you know, the former president has been hard to pin down specifics on Social Security reforms, but like Biden, he has vowed to protect the program.But his version of that might manifest itself differently.So last year, Trump urged Republicans in Congress not to cut, in his words, a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.And that is a position he has since repeated on the campaign trail.But in a March interview with CNBC, Trump answered a question about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid by saying there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also the theft and bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements.There's tremendous amount of things and numbers you can do.So he's kind of suggesting there that there might be some cuts coming to entitlements.But I think a lot more likely is that given all the recent discussion that Trump has had put out on the campaign trail about funding programs via tariffs and having other countries sort of pay for programs or trade with the U.S. or taxing accordingly.I think that if Trump is looking to keep the program without cutting benefits, he will need the additional funding to come from somewhere like tariffs.So whereas a Biden administration is much more likely to raise that income threshold, talked about and sort of take a little from here and a little bit from there to solve that funding shortfall, it seems more likely that Trump would probably try to decrease taxes and solve that funding shortfall by placing the burden on other nations via tariffs or trade programs.Although he has not articulated that specifically, that is what seems to be most likely based on his current rhetoric on the campaign trail today.But the good news for retirees is perhaps the only thing that Trump and Biden agree on is that Social Security is sacred and neither of them are talking about cutting the program.What we are looking at here are differences in how you solve the looming shortfall in both.
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