Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #1245
04/16/2025
New to the Hotline? Click here to subscribe–it's free.

1) Tim Cook’s $60 Billion Payday at the White House

The Apple CEO just had the most lucrative visit to the Oval Office in American history.  He traveled to the White House to meet with President Trump, got a special handshake deal with the President on tariff exemptions, and suddenly Apple's stock soared by $60 billion over the next few days.

Trump boasted "I helped Tim Cook, recently, and that whole business."

Understatement of the century!

Good for Apple - one of America’s iconic companies. But the problem is that the tens of millions of men and women who run small businesses can't make those kind of lucrative insider deals.

Just like any tax, tariffs - if applied at all - should be uniform at a low rate and with no carve outs for those with powerful lobbyists.

Meanwhile, the FTC is suing Meta for making too much money and being too popular with consumers.

2) Republicans for Higher Taxes?

We are alarmed that Republicans refuse to slam the door on rumors of a millionaire surtax in their tax plan. The official line now seems to be that "everything is on the table":

This is the GOP’s tax day message?

We remind elected Republicans in the House and Senate that the vast majority signed a written promise to voters never to raise tax rates. We provide the full lists of pledge takers courtesy of ATR, in case some of them forgot:

• U.S. House (191 signers)

• U.S. Senate (44 signers)

It's also miserable economics, as your Unleash Prosperity Now (UP’s 501 (c)(4) affiliate) co-founders wrote in a letter yesterday to President Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune:

Raising the top income tax rate now would send the wrong message to job creators, small business owners, and investors--most of whom file as pass-through entities and would be directly impacted. Penalizing this country's very engine of job creation would be an economic misstep with far-reaching consequences...

We urge you to stay true to the Republican Party's long-held commitment to low taxes and a vibrant free market economy. Rather than backpedaling on these core principles, now is the time to double down on policies that promote growth, competition, and entrepreneurial dynamism.

And what is the point of raising the top tax rate when the Trump tax cut (which lowered the rate to 37%) led to the rich paying more of the tax burden?

This is a weird form of GOP virtue signaling that will weaken the American economy. We thought only the Left did that.

3) Congress Must Take Back Its Taxing Power

Imagine for a moment that Kamala Harris had won the election and the first thing she did as president was declare a "climate emergency," and then unilaterally ordered a stiff carbon tariff on products imported into the United States.

Conservatives would be enraged by this unconstitutional power grab.

For good reason.

Article I Section 1 is the very first thing in the Constitution after the famous "We the People" preamble, so it must be pretty important:

"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

And when the specific powers of Congress are enumerated in Article I Section 8, the taxation power is the very first thing listed:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises...

Regardless of how one thinks about the Trump tariffs, they ARE taxes.  And they could surpass hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues.

Yet Congress had delegated its tariff power to the president for "emergency" purposes - such as in times of war.

Can anyone honestly argue that the current situation is an emergency as originally intended by the Framers?

A Congressional vote on taxes that could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars seems imperative.  And yet… there has been just one Senate vote (on the Canada "emergency") and no vote in the House.

Ironically, the Supreme Court, at the urging of Republicans in Congress and conservatives around the country, through the Loper Bright decision, reined in the power grab of executive branch regulatory agencies to make laws without congressional approval.

But now, these same Republicans are assigning Congress's taxing power over to the Executive Branch when it comes to tariffs.

This isn't what our Founding Fathers had in mind.