EDITORIAL

Invisible home run on taxes

President Donald Trump shows off the tax bill after signing it in the Oval Office.

Some 2 million U.S. workers have received bonuses, or pay raises, or 401(k) matches from 130 companies, including Walmart, AT&T, American Airlines, PNC Financial, and Nationwide. In most cases, the corporations’ CEOs have said they were responding to President Trump’s tax cuts.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has called these bonuses “crumbs.” But most of the cash ones have been $500 to $1,000. And Chrysler’s announced bonuses will be $2,000, which to most Americans is not chump change.

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Under President Barack Obama, the growth rate of the economy was an anemic 3 percent. Many, many Americans have not seen a raise in years, forget about bonuses or booming 401(k)s.

Meanwhile, Chrysler has announced that it is bringing a plant back from Mexico to Warren, Mich. — investing $1 billion and creating 2,500 jobs. Chrysler’s chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne expressly said it was because of Trump trade policies and the new tax code, which Sen. Rob Portman has long staunchly maintained would stop the flight of U.S. manufacturing to foreign counties. In fact, Mr. Portman said it would reverse the migration of manufacturing jobs. We now have some strong evidence that he was right.

These and other signs of economic vigor — Walmart is raising its minimum hourly wage from $9 an hour to $11 an hour — deserve at least as much attention as the President’s verbal indelicacies, past, present, or future.

One can argue that the tax reform will create too much, or inevitably uncontrolled, government debt. And one can argue that the President is his own worst enemy — that he obscures his own accomplishments. But you cannot deny that the President has been good for the economy and has begun to make good on his basic campaign promises — a return of manufacturing jobs and more money in the pockets of the middle class and the working man and woman. The UAW leadership may officially denounce Mr. Trump, but try telling its members that 2,500 new jobs in Michigan is a “crumb.”

Mr. Trump must take the heat for his own errors, including what may be his biggest one — that Americans don’t really care if their President is dignified. But his home runs should at least be noted. The tax cuts seem to be a home run.

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