US: Trump open to increasing gas tax

By Ovunc Kutlu

NEW YORK

President Donald Trump said Monday that he would consider raising tax on gasoline in order to create revenue to support his proposed $1 trillion infrastructure spending.

"It’s something that I would certainly consider ... if we earmarked money toward the highways," he said in an interview with Bloomberg News in the Oval Office.

The additional revenue would help $200 billion federal financing to upgrade the country's aging infrastructure, while the rest is expected to be sourced privately.

Federal gasoline tax was last raised in 1993, to 18.4 cents per gallon on gasoline and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel, when Bill Clinton took action to first reduce budget deficit, and later redirected revenue from gas tax to the Highway Trust Fund in 1997.

In Monday's interview, Trump also reiterated his support for the "reciprocal tax" that would level the U.S.'s import tariffs with foreign countries' imports taxes on American goods.

"If a country’s charging us 52 percent and we’re charging them nothing for the same product going back and forth? Nobody can fight it," he said in the interview.

The President's proposal differs from the House Speaker Paul Ryan's "border-adjusted tax" plan, which would lower corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent on American companies' domestic sales and imports, but would not tax any U.S. exports.

Trump administration announced Wednesday that it plans to cut corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 and impose a one-time unspecified tax on American firms abroad.