Donald Trump bets on Wall Street hawks and announces a tax revolution. The two economic ministers chosen by the president-elect of the United States are the banker Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs, Treasury, and billionaire Wilbur Ross to Commerce, where another billionaire, Todd Ricketts, will play the role of deputy secretary.
These are controversial choices, which go in the opposite direction to the populism of Trump's electoral campaign, which had openly sided against these financial circles, repeatedly accusing Hillary Clinton for his ties, according to The Donald too close, with Wall Street and, in particular, precisely with Goldman Sachs. The two, in Trump's eyes, also have the great merit of having been staunch supporters of him since the first hour.
Mnuchin is a member of one of the most prominent families in New York's Jewish community and worked for Goldman for 17 years. He owes his fortune, however, to the subprime mortgage operations carried out in 2007 with the OneWest Bank fund, making huge profits precisely in the days in which the explosion of the real estate bubble sent the American economy upside down.
Ross, on the other hand, is a textbook assault capitalist, who built his huge fortune (estimated wealth of $3 billion) by buying and then restructuring semi-failed companies. Another classic piece in the repertoire of assault finance.
Their promises and premises are clear and go in two directions. That of the maxi-tax cuts and that of the protectionist revision of the free trade treaties, as well as a step back on the rules passed by Obama to reduce speculation on the financial markets. Mnuchin has already announced "the largest tax cut since Ronald Reagan", thanks to which America will achieve, according to him, an economic growth of between 3% and 4% per year. Ross, on the other hand, has declared that he wants to close "stupid commercial treaties" such as the TPP, the trans-Pacific agreement whose days seem already numbered.
The tax cut, in line with the promises made in Trump's electoral campaign, will be aimed above all at American businesses and the middle class, with the aim of stimulating growth and creating new jobs: the primary objective, in this sense, is the reduction of the corporate tax rate from 30% to 15%.
