Policy Meeting
Thursday’s meeting, where representatives from various industries presented briefings on policies the next president should pursue, signals that Trump’s campaign is soliciting fresh policy input. The campaign hasn’t released names of attendees. Hamm, the chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc., said he spoke at the gathering, “exclusively about energy.”
Hamm, who served as Mitt Romney’s energy adviser during the former Massachusetts governor’s 2012 presidential run, refrained from discussing any other presentations, saying, “I don’t think we’ll go there.”
Trump has sought relatively little input on tax policy to date. For example, Megan Van Etten, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said: “We have not provided any input to Trump on taxes.”
Congressional Plans
Congressional Republicans have pledged to release a blueprint for overhauling the U.S. tax code in the coming weeks -- and the lack of detail so far in Trump’s proposals suggests he may be willing to defer to Congress, said Dean Zerbe, the national managing director of Alliant Group, a Washington lobbying firm.
“At the end of the day, you’d want a detailed legislative product,” said Zerbe, a former tax counsel for the Senate Committee on Finance. “It does suggest they’ll be looking for the details from Congress.”
Regardless, advice on tax policy may not matter much to Trump, said Kenneth Kies, a tax lobbyist and managing director of Federal Policy Group, a Washington lobbying firm.
“It really doesn’t matter what these guys think, because Trump probably doesn’t care,” Kies said. “He doesn’t talk about his tax plans in his stump speeches, which should tell you how much a core issue it is for him in the election.”