Former Mayor Pete Buttigieg questioned on Monday whether the American economy under President Donald Trump was actually doing well, describing it as “allegedly great.”
“Even before the recession that sooner or later will come, we’re being told that the economy is great, right?” Buttigieg asked. The former mayor spoke at a VICE News Black and Brown Democratic Presidential forum on Monday in Des Moines, Iowa.
Buttigieg criticized the Trump economy, noting that many minority Americans were not experiencing economic growth, despite historic low unemployment numbers for African Americans and Hispanics.
“Meanwhile a lot of folks, disproportionately black and brown folks, aren’t seeing that fantastic economy get to them,” he said.
He accused Trump of only measuring the economy by the stock market and the GDP, despite data repeatedly cited by the president showing growth in blue-collar wages and growing household income.
Buttigieg said if he was elected president he would focus on raising the minimum wage and making sure people had better savings.
“We know right now, even in an allegedly great economy, that that’s not happening,” he said. “I’m going to make sure that we have policies.”
Buttigieg proposed a wholesale rollback of Trump’s tax cuts in a recent interview with the New York Times.
“So a financial transactions tax, rollback wholesale of the Trump tax cuts with a special focus on what’s going on in the corporate-rate tax cut,” he said. “Close the 199A loophole, deal with some of the enforcement deficiencies that are driving the big part of the revenue gap right now I think. I’m also open to a wealth tax.”