Clinton slams Trump's economic proposals

Hillary Clinton launched her counterattack at Donald Trump on Monday, hours after the Republican presidential nominee slammed her in an economic address in Detroit.

Trump touted his revised economic plan and targeted Clinton in his remarks to the Detroit Economic Club, characterizing the former secretary of state as “the candidate of the past” whose economic policies would “weaken America.”


Clinton responded during a rally in St. Petersburg, Florida, asserting that Trump’s proposals are just recycled versions of the same old failed Republican policies — a boon for the top 1 percent but a danger to America.

“He’s got — I don’t know — a dozen or so economic advisers he just named: hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve, apparently,” Clinton said, deriding the real estate mogul’s recently announced all-male cast of economic advisers. “And so they wrote him a speech, and he delivered it in Detroit. Now, they tried to make his old, tired ideas sound new, but here’s what we all know, because we heard it again: His tax plans will give super big tax breaks to large corporations and the really wealthy, just like him and the guys who wrote the speech.”

Clinton presented herself as an ally of small businesses and students with college debt, many of whom are aspiring small-business owners, and boasted about the fact that she has released detailed plans, including how her proposals will be funded. But Trump, she said, would roll back Wall Street regulations, eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and “basically just repackage trickle-down economics.”

“Trickle-down economics does not help our economy grow,” Clinton said. “It does not help the vast majority of Americans, but it does really well for people already at the top. Well we’re gonna turn that upside down. We’re going to make the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes for a change.”

She questioned Trump’s business chops, remarking that he “claims to be so successful” and suggesting that the way Trump has done business isn’t the way America should.

“It’s really outrageous to me that somebody who claims to be so successful has done it by stiffing hardworking Americans,” Clinton said. “Hundreds and hundreds of people, so that he could avoid paying his fair bills. You know, that is not how we do business in America.”

Trump’s address was widely viewed as a reset after a week filled with a barrage of controversies — and Clinton reveled in it.

“It’s clear — and a lot of the journalists have written this — that Trump is scrambling to do damage control,” she said. “That’s why he listed those dozen new economic advisers: three Wall Street money managers, an oil baron, a former chief economist from one of the banks at the heart of the financial crisis. But this is from a guy who has said he knows more than the generals about ISIS. So he’s not only putting our national security at risk. Now he’s putting our economy at risk.”

Clinton urged supporters not to “be fooled” by Trump, insisting that with the New York billionaire, what you see is what you get.

“He is still the same Donald Trump who makes his shirts and his ties overseas instead of in the United States. He is the same Donald Trump who refuses to pay his bills for small businesses and working people, and, in fact, he is the same person who can be provoked by a tweet and who takes apparent pleasure in tormenting protesters at his rallies, a reporter with a tough question, even a crying baby and a Gold Star family,” Clinton said. “So just imagine Donald Trump in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. What happens when someone gets under his skin? I don’t know that the United States can afford that kind of risk.”

While stating that she won’t raise taxes on the middle class, Clinton vowed to increase taxes on the wealthy “because that’s where the money is” — and she offered an additional piece of advice amid her call for unity.

“Here is the other thing I want you to know because I want you to tell your friends: Don’t let a friend vote Trump,” Clinton quipped, after chants of “Hillary! Hillary!”