Improving Plan

“We’re just trying to dot some of the Is and make a few improvements to it,” Moore said. “Mr. Trump seems open to these ideas.”

Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The billionaire has promised lower taxes and dropping the business rate to 15 percent, which Kudlow said is “right out of the Reagan playbook” and could be “the single-most stimulative economic-growth policy right now.” Kudlow was quick to add that the candidate hasn’t signed off on the Reagan crew’s tax ideas, though he said Trump told them: “Go and talk to some of my staff.”

Laffer, the former economic adviser to Reagan whose famous Laffer Curve was a mainstay of that White House’s supply-side thinking, isn’t in touch with the campaign as routinely as the others. Earlier this year, he made a trip to speak with Trump at Trump Tower in New York. Laffer said the talk went well and that Trump strikes him as “presidential.”

Not every old Reagan hand has been brimming with praise for Trump. When Martin Feldstein, who led Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, was asked by Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo earlier this month what he thought of Trump’s economic plan, he answered, “I don’t think he knows what his plan is.” He said he thought Trump has “done a wonderful job of marketing himself” but has left a lot of uncertainty about his policies, and Feldstein said he doubted the Republican can beat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Even the Reagan supporters are leery of Trump’s threats on sweeping trade tariffs. They can support the kind of highly specific sanctions that Reagan used, but not large-scale import taxes. Still, Kudlow said Trump would probably be a strong negotiator on trade agreements.

Political Muscle

Trump also has some of the former president’s political muscle behind him. Ed Rollins, who ran Reagan’s 1984 campaign, is helping out the Great America political action committee backing Trump’s run. And Jeffrey Lord, who worked in the Reagan White House’s political arm, wrote a book, “What America Needs: The Case for Trump.” At an April rally, Trump said, whenever Lord is “in a little doubt he says, ‘He reminds me of Ronald Reagan.’ ”

“Philosophically speaking, I just don’t see them as that far apart,” Lord said of Trump and Reagan.