world by cutting our corporate tax rate to 34%. that was below the average rate for developed countries at the time. everybody thought that was a monumental thing that happened. but then, under this pro-america system, our economy booned. it just went it just went beautifully, right through the roof. the middle class thrived. and median family income increased. other countries saw the success. they looked at us, they saw, what is america doing? what s happening with the united states? and they acted very swiftly by cutting their taxes lower and lower and lower and reforming their tax systems to be far more competitive than ours. over the past 30 years, the average business tax rate among developed nations fell from 45%
on their tax plan that outlines some points like going from seven individual brackets to three and a 15% business tax rate. for more on this, let s go to nbc s kristen welker who is covering the president s tax reform i m just going to stop calling it tax reform. tax speech today from springfield, missouri. kristen, again, i wait and wait and wait to get specifics on a tax plan and what we get are aspirations and generalities. that s right. today wasn t about specifics. and the administration was very clear about that. i think what it does mark, though, ali, and what s significant about today s speech is that this is a shift in strategy that we are seeing from this president and from this administration. he s taking his message on the road. this is the first of what i am told is going to be a number of stops in the coming weeks, in the coming months as they fight to get their tax proposal through. that s a very sharp difference from what we saw when he was trying to overhaul obamac
got to say how they re going to pay for it. and thus far, no one has done so, and that s why they re stalled out. i worked with then-candidate donald trump in helping put this tax plan together. he does know the details, he was very specific to larry kudlow and i and others who were working on this on exactly what he wanted to do. he always talked about wanting to cut the corporate tax rate because it s just uncompetitive. we can t go forward in a global economy with the highest business tax rate in the world. i just got back from ireland about a year ago. every other company is an american company that s moved to ireland because their tax rate is one-third of what ours is. he also talked today, and whenever i met with him, about there s 26.5 million small businesses out there. he always said i want to make sure every small businessman and woman get a tax cut, too. the message is simple. you can t have healthy jobs if
many, many years. [applause] in 1986 ronald reagan led the world by cutting our corporate daks rate by 34%. that was below the average rate for developed countries at the time. everybody thought that was a monument althing that happened. but then under this pro america system, our economy boond. it just went it just went beautifully, right through the roof. the middle class thrived and median family income increased. other countries saw that success. they looked at us, they saw what is america doing, what s happening with the united states, and they acted very swiftly by cutting their taxes lower and lower and lower and reforming their tax systems to be far more competitive than ours. over the past 30 years the average business tax rate among
than 60% higher. we have totally surrendered our competitive edge to other countries. we have totally surrendered. we re not surrendering anymore. [applause] ideally, and i say this for our secretary of the treasury, we would like to bring our business tax rate down to 15%, which would make our tax rate lower than most countries but still by no means the lowest, unfortunately, in the world. but it would make us highly competitive. in other words, foreign companies have more than april 60% tax advantage over american companies. they can pay their workers more, sell their products and services at lower cost, and still make more money than their u.s. competitors. we cannot restore our wealth if