President Trump heralded a “new chapter in American greatness” in his address to Congress last night. A pretty picture, says senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Caroline Freund, but not the likely outcome.The former World Bank economist predicted that the next four years are going to look very like Reagan’s presidency while the US economy experiences a short boom followed by a crash.Columnist Chris Johns said Trump’s speech was light on detail about the administration’s much mooted plans to reform tax and the president appeared to demonstrate a lack of understanding about what exactly VAT is. Both Freund and Johns agreed that the US corporate tax system is bad for domestic business and President Trump is right to have it in his cross-hairs, though that would spell bad news for Ireland.Also on the podcast, Laura Slattery and Mark Paul of the business team were in studio to discuss the rumours of exploratory talks on a possible take-over of The Examiner by Independent News Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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