Donald Trump speaks at an event hosted by The Economic Club of New York at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York on Thursday. | Getty Trump promises to create 25 million jobs with economic plan The GOP nominee also rolled out a third major revision to his tax plan.

Donald Trump on Thursday fleshed out his campaign's economic plan, declaring in a speech at the New York Economic Club that it would deliver a jolt to the economy and create 25 million new jobs over the next decade.

"Over the next 10 years, our economic team estimates that under our plan the economy will average 3.5 percent growth and create a total of 25 million new jobs. You can visit our website, just look at the math, it works," Trump told his lunchtime audience.


The plan, as Trump remarked Thursday, would result in a $4.4 trillion tax cut scored as $2.6 trillion “under dynamic growth models, which is how taxes should be scored.”

The economic growth, Trump continued, would provide for his campaign's other proposals, including the childcare plan championed by daughter Ivanka.

Trump did not cite independent analysis validating his growth projections, but he was nonetheless confident: "It will be amazing to watch," he said. "You watch, it'll happen."

"It will be deficit neutral," the Republican nominee added. "If we reach 4 percent growth, it will reduce the deficit, it will be accomplished through a complete overhaul of our tax, regulatory, energy and trade policies."

Trump acknowledged that "most economists" disagree that 4 percent growth is achievable in an economy slowed by a number of factors including increased automation, an aging workforce and low-wage competition overseas, but presented his proposal as a more optimistic way to look at the economy.

"My economic plan rejects the cynicism that says our labor force will keep declining, that our jobs will keep leaving, and that our economy can never grow as it did once before," he said.

Trump's policy prescriptions have faced harsh criticism, particularly as a Republican who has broken with conservative orthodoxy on international trade deals and social programs like the childcare proposal, in particular. His campaign manager Kellyanne Conway has defended Trump against Clinton, saying on multiple occasions since her promotion that the businessman's campaign is more focused on policy than his opponent, despite Clinton having released her policy platforms months ago.

The Democratic National Committee mocked Trump's decision to deliver the speech on the eight-year anniversary of Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy, making reference to Trump's 2006 remark in which the businessman said he was"sort of" hoping for a crash in the housing market "because then people like me would go in and buy."

"Donald Trump couldn't have picked a better day to talk about his economic agenda – the anniversary of the financial crisis," DNC General Election Chief of Staff Brandon Davissaid in a statement. "After Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, the economy plunged into the largest recession since the Great Depression and millions of Americans lost their homes and retirement savings. Donald Trump? He rooted for the collapse of the housing market in 2006 – and he got his wish."

The tax plan, the cost of which remains unclear, would exempt millions of low-income Americans while promising no cuts to spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Defense spending would also be exempt from cuts, Trump emphasized.

“Our economic team has further modeled that the growth induced savings from trade, energy and regulation reform will shave at least another $1.8 trillion off of the remaining debt. That leaves around $800 billion,” Trump continued. “This money can all be saved through simple commonsense reforms. If we just save one penny of each federal dollar spent on non-defense and non-entitlement programs, we can save almost $1 trillion over the next decade. One penny. We can all do that. Save over $1 trillion.”

Trump repeated, “Again, this is spending that does not touch defense. Because we have to build up our military which is so terribly depleted. And that does not touch entitlements."

Addressing in a subsequent Q&A whether he would consider any scenario where he would default on the debt, Trump said, "no," while adding that he would consider buying back some debt. House Republicans have threatened defaulting on the debt as a means of extracting policy concessions.

“I love buying back debt, I love negotiating debt,” he said. “The debt of this country is absolutely sacred, absolutely 100 percent sacred.”

Trump today offered new details on how he intends to bring down the cost of his tax-reform plan, as well as additional benefits he’d direct to lower- and middle-class Americans.

In what amounts to the third major revision of his tax-reform plan, Trump proposed a number of new ways to subsidize child care including a new deduction for those expenses. He said he’d expand the earned income tax credit, a wage supplement for the working poor, and create so-called “dependent care savings accounts.” All taxpayers would be eligible for those accounts, Trump said, but the government would match the first 50 percent of the contributions of low-income families up to $1,000.

Those changes though would be partially offset by other revisions to his previous plan that would have benefited those further down the income ladder. First, Trump is backing off his plan to dramatically expand the standard deduction, which is the flat amount Americans can deduct from their taxes. While he originally proposed nearly quadrupling it to $50,000 for couples, which would take tens of millions of low-income people off the income-tax rolls, Trump now says he’d settle for $30,000. He’d also end personal exemptions, which help subsidize child rearing costs, as well as the head-of-household filing status.

Trump also proposed new ways of dunning the wealthy, including limiting the amount of capital gains the wealthy could pass onto their heirs tax-free. He’d also limit their deductions to $200,000 per couple.

Those revisions come in response to complaints that Trump’s original tax plan, offered last September, would have cost a whopping $10 trillion with independent assessments showing the wealthy being the biggest winners.

Trump said today his plan would now cost $4 trillion, and $2.6 trillion under "dynamic scoring”— a budget analysis that assumes some cost of tax cuts will be offset by subsequent economic growth. Trump also said the middle class will emerge the biggest winners of his plan.

“The tax relief will be concentrated on the working and middle-class taxpayer,” he said. “They will receive the biggest benefit – it won’t even be close.”

Both the Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation, two Washington think tanks that produce independent assessments of the candidates’ tax plans, said they would soon have cost estimates of the plan. The Tax Foundation said it would produce its estimate by Friday.

At other points in his speech, Trump reaffirmed past stated positions, including his vows to ensure that China — “and I like China; they’re my tenant, they buy condos all the time; they’re just fine” — is labeled a currency manipulator and to keep the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership "unless we can do something that's phenomenal and I'm not seeing it right now, I can tell you that, I'm not seeing it.”

Of China, Trump added, “they are a manipulator, grandmaster level.”

Remarking upon the people who would benefit from his plan, Trump said that he has met workers who are "making less money today than they made 18 years ago in real wages."

"They're working much harder, often times because of the disastrous Obamacare we're going to repeal and replace. Oftentimes they're working two jobs. So they're working harder. They're older. And they're making less. It's like me. I'm working harder than I ever worked also. But these are minor — nobody cares about that. That's OK," Trump cracked, to laughter in the audience. "Who cares about that."

Brian Faler, Eli Stokols and Matthew Nussbaum contributed to this report.