After Donald Trump’s speech outlining his economic policy, the contradictions attending that part of the Republican Presidential nominee’s platform are more glaring than ever. Photograph by Salwan Georges / Detroit Free Press / TNS via Getty

From the beginning of Donald Trump's campaign, there has been a nagging inconsistency in his approach to economic issues. On trade and immigration, he has broken with Republican dogma, arguing that the influx from abroad of cheap goods and low-wage workers has undermined the job prospects and living standards of ordinary Americans. On tax policy, however, Trump has stuck to the standard G.O.P. script, promising a slew of tax cuts skewed toward businesses and the rich. To be sure, until Monday, Trump hadn't talked much about his tax plan, but the broad outlines of it were there on his Web site, serving as a reminder of the limits of his populism.

Trump rolled out his original tax plan last September, after his Republican-primary opponents accused him of lacking policy specifics. I thought at the time that adopting trickle-down economics represented a strategic error for a candidate who was promoting himself as a new type of Republican. Instead of saying he'd slash business taxes and bring the top rate of income tax down to twenty-five per cent, Trump could have promised tax cuts and tax credits targeted specifically at middle-class Americans, citing the fact that wealthy Americans were doing fine and didn't need another handout. For instance, he could have suggested raising the upper-income cut-off on Social Security contributions and using the cash this generated to pay for higher benefits for everybody. Or he could have eschewed tax cuts aimed at the wealthy in favor of expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, which boosts the take-home pay of low-income working families.

It’s true that without any offsetting cuts in spending, such a tax plan would have raised the hackles of deficit hawks—but the plan he did introduce raised those hackles anyway. A plan aimed at the middle class, however, could have complemented Trump's populist line on immigration and trade, wrong-footed the Democrats, and allowed him to claim he had a three-pronged approach to raising wages and living standards. In short, it would have made him a much more formidable candidate.

The problem was that moving in that direction would have signalled that Trump was a genuine populist insurrectionary, rather than a cosseted billionaire who plays one on television. Through the years, Trump has, at various times, advocated genuinely populist policies, such as raising the minimum wage and taxing wealth more highly. But he has also flirted with highly regressive policies favored by Republican élites, such as slashing the corporate tax rate, reducing the top rate of income tax, and getting rid of the federal estate tax, which affects only the wealthiest American families.

In the speech that Trump delivered at the Detroit Economic Club on Monday, all three of these giveaways to the rich featured prominently, as did deregulation—another issue that is of interest primarily to the donor class. "My campaign is about reaching out to everyone as Americans," Trump said. But the details of his speech confirmed that he had caved in to the regressive, anti-tax G.O.P. orthodoxy that is defined and policed by groups such as Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Club for Growth.

Consequently, the contradictions attending Trump's economic platform are more glaring than ever. He goes into the last months of the election campaign as a political schizophrenic. On immigration and trade, he is a pitchfork-wielding Pat Buchanan Republican; on taxes and regulation, he is a dark-suited Paul Ryan Republican. Perhaps the old saying is right and consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Purely from a political perspective, though, it seems to me that Trump has missed a big opportunity.

As he delivered his speech in Detroit, the tensions between the populist Trump and the trickle-down Trump were quickly evident. For the first half hour or so, he barely mentioned trade, one of his signature economic issues. Instead, he talked about his revised tax plan, which is very similar to the one Ryan has proposed, the latest version of which was released in June. Last September, Trump said he would replace the current income-tax system, which has seven brackets, to one with three: ten per cent, twenty per cent, and twenty-five per cent. Now Trump has brought the three rates up to match those in Ryan's plan: twelve per cent, twenty-five per cent, and thirty-three per cent.

The proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which the Bush Administration suspended for ten years, also mimics Ryan's plan, as does the call to slash the corporate tax rate, which currently stands at thirty-five per cent. In this instance, though, Trump outdid the House Speaker is his largesse toward the business class. Ryan would cut the corporate tax rate to twenty per cent; Trump to fifteen per cent. About the only residue of populism related to taxes in Trump’s presentation on Monday was a reiteration of his pledge to eliminate the notorious carried-interest deduction, which allows managers of hedge funds and private-equity firms to pay lower tax rates than the rest of us. But that very necessary proposal to prune the tax code bears inspection. As a stand-alone measure, it would substantially increase the tax liabilities of hedgies and private-equity tycoons. But many of these economic fortunates could still end up paying less over all to the I.R.S. because of the reduction in the top rate of income tax that Trump is proposing.

Until he specifies the income thresholds at which each of his tax rates would kick in, it is difficult to estimate the exact distributional consequences of what he is proposing. But to the considerable extent that it mimics the Ryan plan, it would be a boon for the already wealthy. A recent analysis of Ryan's proposals, from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, showed that households in the middle of the income distribution would see their after-tax incomes rise by 0.2 per cent. Households in the top one per cent of the distribution, where Trump and many of his economic advisers reside, would see their after-tax incomes go up 5.3 per cent.

Even Trump's one new gesture toward low- and middle-income families, a proposal that families be allowed to deduct the cost of child care from their taxes, wasn't quite what it seemed. For one thing, many poor families don't pay much federal income tax: Social Security is their main burden. Secondly, the fact that it would be a tax deduction, rather than a tax credit, means that wealthy families would get a much bigger break. "Making child care fully tax deductible is just about the worst possible way to help subsidize the cost of child care," Michael Lindon, a budget expert who used to work on Capitol Hill, noted on Twitter.

When Trump had finished talking about taxes, he moved on to regulation. Here, too, his remarks were straight out of the standard G.O.P. playbook. He bemoaned the length of the federal register and accused the Obama Administration of issuing more than two thousand new regulations last year alone—“each a hidden tax on American consumers, and a massive lead weight on the American economy." Trump promised a temporary moratorium on new regulations, and he also said, "I will ask each and every federal agency to prepare a list of all of the regulations they impose on Americans which are not necessary."