US politics: Donald Trump slams ‘cruel, heartless’ Joe Biden over tax hike plan

Donald Trump came out swinging after Joe Biden unveiled his multi-trillion infrastructure plan with the former US President calling it “monstrous”.

America’s corporations and upper middle class face sweeping tax hikes to fund President Joe Biden’s US$2 trillion (A$2.63 trillion) plan to fix the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

Highways, railroads and airports are among the main beneficiaries of the potentially transformative program, which would funded in part by a corporate tax rate hike from 21 to 28 per cent.

Families earning more than US$400,000 (A$525,000) were also likely to pay higher taxes, according to recent comments by White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki.

Overseas profits would also face new penalties under the ambitious plan, which Mr Biden will announce Wednesday afternoon local time in Pittsburgh.

Mr Biden will outline is plans to modernise transport, create millions of jobs and “out compete” China.

Joe Biden wants to fix America’s crumbling infrastructure. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

But his predecessor came out swinging ahead of the speech, with former president Donald Trump describing the tax plan as “among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history”.

“If this monstrosity is allowed to pass, the result will be more Americans out of work, more families shattered, more factories abandoned, more industries wrecked, and more Main Streets boarded up and closed down — just like it was before I took over the presidency 4 years ago,” Mr Trump said in a statement.

“I then set record low unemployment, with 160 million people working.

“This tax hike is a classic globalist betrayal by Joe Biden and his friends: the lobbyists will win, the special interests will win, China will win, the Washington politicians and government bureaucrats will win — but hardworking American families will lose.

Donald Trump has slammed Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

“Joe Biden’s cruel and heartless attack on the American Dream must never be allowed to become Federal law. Just like our southern border went from best to worst, and is now in shambles, our economy will be destroyed!”

The White House laid out the program ahead of Mr Biden’s address, saying tax havens and “offshoring” of jobs by US corporations would be targeted.

The “Build Back Batter” infrastructure program faces a tough battle through Congress with the Democrat’s slim majority set to face bruising opposition from Republicans.

Senior conservatives have established the Coalition to Protect American Workers to fight the corporate tax hike and measures that would unwind the Trump administration’s 2017 tax changes.

“This is not the time for unnecessary tax increases that will destroy jobs,” the group’s website said when launched this week.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have a plan for America’s infrastructure. Picture: AFP

“Congress should be saying yes to good jobs, not creating new taxes.”

The Biden administration would inject $620 billion (AUD $815 billion) into transport, including 32,000km of roads and highways as well as repairing thousands of bridges and doubling federal funding for public transit.

There are a number of green initiatives in the plan, which vows to “spark the electric vehicle revolution” by building a network of 500,000 EV chargers, replacing 50,000 diesel transit vehicles and electrifying 20 per cent of America’s yellow school bus fleet.

The White House compared the infrastructure plan to “great projects of the past” and said it would “unify and mobilise the country to meet the great challenges of our time: the climate crisis and the ambitions of an autocratic China”.

“It will invest in Americans and deliver the jobs and opportunities they deserve. But unlike past major investments, the plan prioritises addressing longstanding and persistent racial injustice,” the White House said.

“The plan targets 40 per cent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities. And, the plan invests in rural communities and communities impacted by the market-based transition to clean energy.

The White House also proposed a “Made in America Tax Plan”.

“President Biden believes that profitable corporations should not be able to get away with paying little or no tax by shifting jobs and profits overseas. President Biden’s plan will reward investment at home, stop profit shifting, and ensure other nations won’t gain a competitive edge by becoming tax havens.”

WJoe Biden wants to fix America’s roads. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

BIDEN ACCUSED OF PROVOKING NORTH KOREA

Meanwhile, Mr Biden has been accused of provoking rogue nation North Korea in the latest public stoush between the two nations.

After former President Donald Trump attempted to take a more diplomatic stance toward the hermit communist country, Mr Biden has moved to assert himself forcefully into issues in the Pacific.

However in a strident continuation of antagonistic rhetoric, North Korea hit back.

A senior Pyongyang official said Biden’s condemnation of North Korea’s firing of two missiles amounted to an “encroachment” and “provocation,” the state-run KCNA news agency reported Saturday.

“Such remarks from the US president are an undisguised encroachment on our state’s right to self-defence and provocation to it,” Ri Pyong Chol, who supervised the missile test, said in a statement, according to the outlet.

People watch a television screen at Suseo railway station in Seoul as a news program reports about the North's latest tactical guided projectile test. Picture: Jung Yeon-je / AFP

Earlier this North Korea carried out its first weapons tests since Biden took office in January. The move was widely seen as testing out the new administration. Biden warned there would be “responses”.

In his first official press conference since taking office the Democratic leader said: “We’re consulting with our allies and partners and there will be responses if they choose to escalate. We will respond accordingly.”

Biden, who served as VP under Barack Obama said he agreed with his former boss’ assertion that North Korea was his biggest foreign policy threat.

That assertion came as some surprise after he lashed China earlier this week, a nation considered by many as the most serious geopolitical issue given it’s role in the COVID pandemic, and aggressive territory expansion.

Biden’s comments also gave more ammunition to his critics he is simply returning the US to Obama-era policies.

BIDEN TO HOLD CHINA ‘ACCOUNTABLE’

Biden has vowed to hold China “accountable” for its human rights abuses, international aggression and predatory trade tactics.

Labelling President Xi Jinping a “smart guy”, Mr Biden said he wasn’t looking for “confrontation” with Beijing but that the US needed to engage in “steep competition”.

“We’ll insist that China play by the international rules, fair competition, fair practices, fair trade,” Mr Biden said in his first presidential press conference, adding that he would focus on human rights in an “unrelenting way”.

“We’re going to hold China accountable to follow the rules.”

Mr Biden said that Xi “does not have a democratic, with a small D, bone in his body” and the US needed to reassert itself as the world’s leading democracy.

US President Joe Biden during his first press briefing in the East Room of the White House. Picture: AFP

“China has an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world and the most powerful country in the world,” Mr Biden said.

“That’s not going to happen on my watch.”

Former president Donald Trump’s assertive approach to Beijing, supported by allies including Australia, reframed the geopolitical landscape over recent years.

Mr Biden’s comments were among his most fulsome on how he will counter China’s growing influence and indicated he will follow Mr Trump’s lead in the region despite rolling back many of the Republican’s signature policies.

He has maintained tariffs set by the Trump administration and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken traded barbs with the Chinese delegation at a bilateral in Alaska last week.

‘I am a decent man.’ Picture: AFP

After Mr Blinken referenced “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, and economic coercion toward our allies”, the Chinese slammed Washington for lecturing the regime.

“We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world,” a statement from Beijing said, referring to civil unrest over the past chaotic year in the US.

“Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.”

This afternoon, I’m holding my first formal press conference as president. Tune in. https://t.co/dvl1RAtOjr

— President Biden (@POTUS) March 25, 2021

‘NICE GUY’

Mr Biden admitted that his “nice guy” image was driving a record number of illegal crossings of America’s southern border in his first press conference since taking office.

“I guess I should be flattered people are coming because I’m a nice guy, that’s the reason why it’s happening, that I am a decent man,” Mr Biden said.

“That’s why they’re coming because they know Biden’s a good guy.”

Mr Biden is under fire over a 20-year high levels of illegal border crossings after rolling back several of Donald Trump’s harsh immigration policies since his January inauguration.

But Mr Biden said he wasn’t wholly responsible for the worsening southern border crisis, defending the surge as seasonal and blaming his predecessor for having “dismantled” border facilities.

UJoe Biden gave his first press conference since he was sworn in as US President in January. Picture: AFP

“Does anybody suggest there was a 31 per cent increase under Trump because he was a nice guy and he was doing good things at the border?” he said.

“That’s not the reason they are coming. The reason they are coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat and the desert, number one. Number two, they are coming because of the circumstances in-country.

“The truth of the matter is, nothing has changed.

“There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months. it happens every year.”

Despite the usual seasonal surge, 2021 is currently on track to exceed the previous recent high set in 2019 in terms of border apprehensions.

More than 100,000 people were arrested last month, which is 24,000 more than in February of 2019, according to CNN.

US troops patrol the US-Mexico Border. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

However the number of unaccompanied children, 11,000 from February 28 to March 20, is set to exceed the previous high of May 2019 when there were 11,400 arrests.

There are currently 5000 children in custody and overwhelmed border patrol agents are reportedly letting migrants cross without any documentation.

Earlier, Mr Biden said his administration was on track to give coronavirus vaccinations to 200 million Americans in his first 100 days.

“I know it’s ambitious, twice our initial goal but no other country has even come close and I believe we can do it,” Mr Biden said.

Mr Biden was holding his first press conference since taking office after having waited an historically long 64 days to take questions from the media.

This was the longest period in 100 years that a new president waited to hold a full press conference, overtaking his 15 predecessors who had each done so within 33 days of their inauguration.

Speaking from the East Room in the White House, Mr Biden was also grilled on increased aggression from China and North Korea as well as gun reform as the country reels from a spate of new mass shootings.

Joe Biden’s socially distanced press conference. Picture: AFP

Mr Biden also confirmed that US troops were unlikely to meet the May deadline set by the administration to withdraw from Afghanistan but that it wouldn’t be until next year.

“We will leave, the question is when we leave,” he said.

Mr Biden defended training his entire early focus on COVID, describing immigration and gun control as “long term problems” that he would “begin one at a time to focus on”.

“When I took office I decided that it was a fairly basic simple proposition and that is I got elected to solve problems and the most urgent problem facing the American people … was COVID-19 and the economic dislocation for millions and millions of Americans,” he said.

Also at question was how Mr Biden plans to fund a AUD$4 trillion (US$3 trillion) infrastructure and climate reform package after his campaign promises that no American making less than $528,000 (US$400,000) a year would see a tax hike.

US President Joe Biden speaks to the press. Picture: AFP