What Trump Needs to Learn About Planes, Trains and Automobiles

The tensions between President Donald Trump and House Republicans over whether to enact a massive infrastructure bill have slipped from the news a bit, but we should expect that debate to re-emerge this spring and summer. In the meanwhile, while the topic is temporarily off the front pages, we have time to examine what should and shouldn’t happen -- which is why I’m excited to participate in a conference that the Hamilton Project is holding on infrastructure today in Washington.

The big new idea is to link changes in the corporate taxation of foreign profits to infrastructure investments. The idea seems quite attractive on the surface: The government would change how overseas profits are taxed, collect some additional revenue in the short term, and use it to overhaul the nation’s woefully inadequate roads, bridges, airports and the like.