Donald Trump’s Treasury pick targets taxes, trade reforms

“We (Mnuchin and Trump’s choice for head of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, also announced on Wednesday) have been in the business of regional banking, and we understand what it is to make loans”, Mnuchin told CNBC.

WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he’s leaving his business empire to focus on being the nation’s 45th president, bowing to pressure to avoid potential conflicts of interest between governing and profiting in the private sector.

“Any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions, so there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class”.

Mnuchin must be confirmed by the Senate and the top Democrat on the chamber’s Finance Committee signaled he may be in for tough questioning.

Asked about Trump’s agreement with United Technologies to keep the production of some Carrier air-conditioning units and almost 1,000 jobsin the US, Mnuchin said Trump initiated the deal. In the latest version of Trump’s tax reform plan, everyone would get a tax cut, but the rich would see the biggest cut of all, according to independent analyses. Mnuchin, whose father was a longtime trader at Goldman Sachs, joined the firm himself after Yale, and spent 17 years there.

With Dune, Mnuchin has invested in movies produced by Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox and Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros, including blockbusters “Avatar”, “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Suicide Squad”.

George Soros speaks at a conference in Berlin, April 2012. “Our job is to make sure that the average American worker has wage increases and have good jobs”. The bank has denied these claims.

As Treasury secretary, Mr Mnuchin would be the administration’s chief economic spokesman, responsible for selling its economic programme to Congress.

Mnuchin, a 53-year-old former Goldman Sachs partner and movie financier, who says he’s known Trump for 15 years, repeated the president-elect’s goals to upgrade infrastructure in the US and said he will consider public-private partnerships, along with other options that he didn’t specify. “That’s the engine of growth to small- and medium-sized businesses”. “This will be the largest tax change since Reagan”.

As Treasury secretary, Mnuchin would be the face of the American economy around the world. “This is a middle income tax cut“.

He says “nobody has made better use on the internet” than he did, adding “Trump has done exactly the same thing”.

This has always been a sore point for congressional leaders who have gone after multinationals that are, in their opinion, not paying their fair share. These two guys are basically saying, listen, we have a traditional Republican agenda – bring money back.

It’s no surprise that Mnuchin plans to cut taxes, reducing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent in an effort to bring business back to the United States.

But many economists argue that lowering the corporate tax rate to 25% would have the same effect without as much lost revenue.

And then there’s the politics. Donald Trump’s plan can only be enacted by changing the tax law.

Ms Yellen has stated that she fully intends “to serve out that term”.

As secretary, Mnuchin will chair the Financial Services Oversight Council, or FSOC, a new body created by Dodd-Frank.

More tea leaves about how the new Trump Administration will approach regulation were steeped during a Wednesday interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Steven Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, selected, respectively, as Treasury and Commerce secretaries.

The job carries expansive responsibility, including managing the federal debt and overseeing Wall Street and the financial markets.