Trump's tax cut won't deliver promised growth. Republicans put politics over permanence. Thanks to Trump’s divisive "get even" mentality, the Republicans have missed a golden opportunity for permanent corporate tax reform.

Melvyn Krauss | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption What's on Donald Trump's agenda for 2018 Here is a look at seven things likely to be a big part of President Donald Trump's agenda in 2018.

Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this column mischaracterized changes to the state and local tax deduction. The deduction was capped at $10,000.

President Trump’s corporate tax cut from 35% to 21% likely will fail because of the "get even" manner the Trump Republicans have used to finance it.

The very same corporate tax cut that might have led to a boom in growth and investment won’t deliver because it is paired with provisions that make it likely to be a temporary tax cut.

The president and his Republican allies couldn’t resist forcing the Democrats to pay for the Republican cut by capping the deduction for state and local taxes on the federal income tax — the so-called SALT provision.

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Such smart-alecky, Machiavellian tactics increase the odds the Democrats will undo much of what the Republicans accomplished and then some once they return to power — which might be very, very soon.

If the Democrats take Congress this November, they can scrap parts of the bill they don’t like and try to overturn a Trump veto; if they fail, 2020 is not that far away.

All this has not been lost on U.S. corporations, which are not as likely to make the medium- to long-term investments the corporate cuts are supposed to create in such a volatile political environment. They will wait and see how the politics play out. Political volatility is toxic both for corporate investment and economic growth.

And the way the Trump Republicans chose to finance the tax cut is certain to lead to substantial political pushback. It energizes Democrats and their donors, turns Republicans in blue states against their own party, and alienates fiscal federalists who believe in different strokes for different folks as far as state spending and taxation is concerned.

Because of the cap on SALT, federal personal income taxes will go up more in blue states like California, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois than red states because, on average, the blue states have higher state income tax rates.

Some red states like Florida, Nevada and Texas escape the burden of financing the corporate cut altogether because they have no state income tax.

But the Trump Republicans’ method of financing the corporate tax cut — and the ad hoc subsidies to the very wealthy that pervade the bill — is more mean-spirited and vicious than merely making the rival Democrats foot the bill for the corporate cut. It goes for the jugular by seeking to degrade the economies of blue states and redistribute the tax base from blue to red states in a move that’s nothing less than a declaration of war.

A tax-induced move of blue-state Silicon Valley to red-state Austin, for example, would gravely wound California to the benefit of Texas.

California's high-tech firms likely will have to pay higher wages to attract talent now that federal taxes are going up there and not in Texas.

Whether residents of high-tax states would be willing to uproot their lives and businesses to escape politicized taxation likely to be temporary is an open question. Most will wait and see how things play out. Trump’s obsession with getting even with his political opponents makes the tax changes he favors less likely to stick.

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Ever mindful that a good part of Trump’s base lack college degrees and may resent those who have them, the Republican tax bill attempts to "get even" with higher education of all things by imposing a tax on the endowments at certain colleges and universities. The House-approved bill also had raising taxes on graduate students who received tuition waivers and ending a tax deduction for interest paid on student loans in it, but these were dropped from the final tax bill.

The Republicans need to be reminded that having an educated work force is far more important for the ability of U.S. corporations to compete in world markets than a tax cut that can be reversed at the pull of a ballot box lever. They should reflect that corporate leaders might be loath to invest in a country where leaders have "know nothing" policies towards higher education.

Thanks to Trump’s divisive "get even" mentality, the Republicans have missed a golden opportunity for permanent corporate tax reform that most fair-minded economists agree could do the United States a lot of good.

Instead, what America got from Trump and his Republican allies was a reversible corporate giveaway.

Melvyn Krauss is a Hoover Institution senior fellow at Stanford University.