On The Money: Trump seeks to shift spotlight from impeachment to economy | Appropriators agree to Dec. 20 funding deadline | New study says tariffs threaten 1.5M jobs

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THE BIG DEAL–Trump seeks to shift spotlight from impeachment to economy in NY speech: President Trump on Tuesday sought to shift the focus to his economic track record with a marquee speech in New York City one day before the first public hearings in the House impeachment inquiry.

{mosads}The president delivered remarks to a gathering of Wall Street executives and business leaders at the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan in what amounted to a victory lap for his administration’s stewardship of the economy. The Hill’s Brett Samuels and I recap his speech for you here. 

• Trump mostly used the speech as a laundry list of his administration’s economic credentials, rattling off statistics about low unemployment rates for some minority groups, an increase in manufacturing jobs and his efforts to roll back government regulations.

• Trump claimed credit for record lows in unemployment and a brief surge in economic activity that began shortly after he inherited a rebounding economy from former President Obama in 2017.

The caveat: While Trump boasted that efforts to cut taxes and regulations helped save the U.S. from “a future of American decline,” his remarks come as the economy slows toward the path expected before he took office.

The background: Tuesday’s speech came at a critical juncture politically for Trump. He is staring down an impeachment inquiry that goes public on Wednesday with the first televised testimony from witnesses who have raised concerns that he pressured a foreign government, Ukraine, to investigate a political rival.

The president is also still in search of a landmark trade deal with China to bolster his case for reelection and faces signs that an economic slowdown may be on the horizon.

No news on China: Trump did not change our understanding of how close the White House and Beijing may be on a preliminary trade deal. 

“We’re the ones that are deciding whether or not we want to make a deal,” he said. “We’re close. A significant phase one trade deal with China could happen. Could happen soon. But we will only accept a deal if it’s good for the United States and our great companies.”

In other words, we’re pretty much where we were a few weeks ago. 

ON TAP TOMORROW

• The House Financial Services Committee holds a hearing on multilateral development institutions, 10 a.m.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the Joint Economic Committee on the economic outlook, 11 a.m.

The Hill is hitting the road on Monday, November 18th to host Building the Dream: Minneapolis. Our editors will be sitting down with Mayor Jacob Frey, state Rep. Kurt Daudt (R), and Minneapolis City Council’s Lisa Bender to discuss local and national housing inequities and Minneapolis’ ambitious 2040 plan. RSVP today! 

LEADING THE DAY

Appropriators agree to Dec. 20 funding deadline: Congress is expected to postpone a shutdown deadline from November 21 until December 20, the top two Congressional appropriators said after a Tuesday evening meeting.

“It appears that it will be December 20th,” said House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), standing alongside Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

The decision to push the funding deadline by just one month conveyed a sense of optimism that the two sides would be able to work through contentious issues, primarily related to President Trump’s border wall.

It also indicated that the sides believed the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Trump over alleged abuses of power would not prevent them from reaching a deal.

“I think it’s irrelevant frankly,” said Lowey of the impeachment inquiry. “I have nothing to do with the other process.”

New study says tariffs threaten 1.5M jobs: President Trump’s trade war is putting 1.5 million U.S. jobs at risk, according to a study commissioned by the Port of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest container port.

“Very simply put, less cargo means less jobs,” said the port’s Executive Director Gene Seroka at a Washington, D.C., press conference.

• The report, which was conducted by consulting firm BST Associates, limited its scope to the effects of the trade war on cargo that goes through the Los Angeles port, meaning the overall effects of the trade war could be larger.
• The report found that 52.7 percent of the goods coming through the port, based on value, were affected by tariffs.
• Of the jobs that could be affected, about 1.26 million, were in danger due to tariffs that Trump imposed, while the remaining 206,790 were threatened by retaliatory tariffs from U.S. trade partners.

Trump tax adviser floats middle-class cuts ahead of 2020: Trump advisor Stephen Moore, said Tuesday that he’s pitched several tax plan ideas for the president’s reelection campaign, including consolidating the number of tax brackets from seven “to potentially three or four.”

Moore, who you may remember from his failed bid for a Federal Reserve governorship, told The Hill on Tuesday that one idea he’s proposed would reduce the middle-income tax rate to as low as 15 percent.

Moore also said he’s proposed providing more tax-free savings accounts that would be targeted to the middle class. He’s also floated an idea that would allow people not to avoid paying capital gains taxes if they use the proceeds from the sale of one stock to purchase another. 

GOOD TO KNOW

• Facebook on Tuesday announced a new feature that will allow users to make payments across the social media giant’s platforms.

• Bloomberg Law: “Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting said that his agency would release a proposal to rewrite community lending and investment rules even as regulators wrestle with how to measure banks’ activities.”

• Marketplace: “More than 13% of American adults know of at least one friend or family member who died over the past five years because they couldn’t pay for medical treatment. That rises to 20% for people of color.”

• Former Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), who chaired several House Financial Services subcommittees, will be a senior counsel at the lobbying firm BGR Group, the firm announced Tuesday.