Donald Trump to increase deficit, roll back climate policies if elected: Anthony Scaramucci

Donald Trump will increase the US budget deficit and wind back Joe Biden’s climate change policies if he is elected president, his former adviser Anthony Scaramucci has warned.

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump will blow out the US budget deficit and roll back President Joe Biden’s climate change policies if he is elected president in November, former Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci has warned.

Speaking at an investment conference hosted by the Association of Super Funds of Australia in Newcastle on Wednesday, Mr Scaramucci, who is the founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, said Mr Trump’s policies on cutting corporate taxes and the tax on social security would increase the US budget deficit.

He said Mr Trump had promised to balance the budget when he was elected president in 2016, but his policies saw it blow out by $US8 trillion ($11.9 trillion).

“He is talking about another tax cut for corporations and the elimination of tax on social security, which is a $US4.6 trillion imbalance in the budget,” he said.

“This is not stuff that the US should be doing at this point in US history, and in terms of the ­economics.”

Mr Scaramucci said Mr Trump would seek to roll back Mr Biden’s policies on climate change, including potentially scrapping the US Inflation Reduction Act, which provides financial incentives for the energy transition.

He said then-president Trump had pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Change accords and would allow more drilling for oil and gas if he were elected president in November.

“He is simplistic about this stuff. He says: ‘Drill baby, drill’.”

“He wants to give out more oil and gas leases.”

Anthony Scaramucci and Donald Trump. Picture: Twitter

He said the Mr Trump’s current advisers were much more radical and further to the right than those in the lead-up to the 2016 election. “He’s got a group of people around him this time that are more dangerous than the people who were with him last time,” he said.

Mr Biden reversed Mr Trump’s policy on the Paris agreement, and the US returned as a supporter of the Paris Climate Change accords in 2021.

Mr Scaramucci said Mr Biden’s policies involved too rapid a transition away from coal.

He said Mr Biden was “trying to jump from coal to liquid natural gas to renewables,” but said it would be better to “go a bit more slowly”. But he said while Mr Trump would seek to reverse some of Mr Biden’s policies if he were elected, he would not be able to reverse the broader energy transition.

He said Mr Trump’s policies on climate change would “definitely set us back”.

“I don’t want to say it is too late, but it will definitely set us back if he wins,” he said. Mr Scaramucci said countries such as the US and Australia were now facing inflationary pressure as a result of policies formulated in response to the Covid pandemic.

He said this included the combination of significant monetary and fiscal stimulus as well as the supply chain disruption from people around the world having to stay at home because of Covid.

“We were not going to avoid inflation in Australia or the US or the world globally if you tell people to go into their homes and sit there for 15 months – and still pay them.”

“The US put $US6 trillion of fiscal and monetary policy into the system and then the supply chain was broken.”

“There was a tremendous amount of money in the system and less goods and services. What do you think is going to happen to prices? They are going to go up.”

He said Democrat contender Vice-President Kamala Harris needed to explain this to the electorate in her campaign or risk Mr Trump blaming the Biden administration for inflation.

He said the US would have been under inflationary pressure as a result of the extra fiscal stimulus in the economy to counter Covid and the damage to supply chains, regardless of who was president over the last four years.

He said Kamala Harris had to explain to people that this would have been Mr Trump’s inflation if he had won the election.

He said he was concerned at then-president Trump’s policies on NATO, pressuring allies in Europe, South Korea and Japan to spend much more on their own defence.

He said that the existence of a strong US Navy was underwriting global trade, which benefited the US and its economy by providing access to cheaper goods made overseas.

He said Mr Trump planned to hit China with new tariffs if he was elected, which would put added pressure on inflation in the US.

It was important for the US to find a way to get along with China, he said.

“If Mr Trump wins, he is talking about excessive tariffs,” he said. “He told somebody over the weekend that the foreign countries pay the tariffs – but that’s not true. American consumers are paying the tariffs, which is a form of regressive taxation.

“The Chinese situation needs to be handled very delicately.”

He said there was a risk of war if clashes between China and the US increased tensions in the ­region.

“We’ve got to get back to figuring out a way to cohabitate with the Chinese, whether or not we like what they are doing in every element of their external or internal mechanisms,” he said.