SEMANTICS? NOT REALLY.
Semantics:
When you hear a CEO say:
“If me and my company don’t get the tax breaks President Trump has asked for, we’ll be forced to shut down operations across the country. Tens of thousands of could lose their jobs, and that would be bad for so many communities. Tell your representatives and senators to vote for the 2025 tax breaks so we can stay in business.”
Trump adds: “And help Make America Great Again!”
What Trump and the CEO are expecting to hear from you:
“President Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is the best thing that ever happened to us. We’d never see tax breaks like what President Trump wants if Harris and the Democrats were in power.“
Now for the semantic translation:
The CEO:
“If we don’t get the tax breaks President Trump asked for, it’ll be business as usual. We’ll just lay off tens of thousands here in the US, raise prices regardless of where they are made, and blame it all on Congress.
The beauty is it doesn’t matter who I blame. It could be “Democrats stood in the way” or “Republicans didn’t have the guts to follow Trump.” Either way, they take the blame and not me or the President.
In the meantime, we’ve increased production at our plants in Africa, Mexico, Indonesia and China in anticipation of shutting down US plants and shedding all the expenses for union and non-union employees’ payrolls, health care benefits, state and local taxes and all those fees.
The funny part is, all this was going to happen no matter what the Congress did. Tax cut or no tax cut, we were going ahead with the plan because the people in those countries work cheap. Plus, we don’t have to worry about taxes and we don’t have to hand out benefits to get them to work. They’re glad to have a job, and in our new, modern plants, automation combined with our new deals with retailers, is going to really boost our profits. Which is great, because our board will give me a huge bonus and lots of new stock options to keep me on board for the next few years. But make no mistake about, I’ll be working with the President’s team to get tax breaks passed the next time around. Oh, for me, not for you, losers.”
On TV the employees are telling everyone how much Trump’s tax breaks mean to them and how much they don’t want to lose their jobs if the bill doesn’t pass.
Semantics: It's not what you say, but what you mean that counts.