In an interview this week with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Mr Sanders made a damning swipe against President Trump. When asked what ‘Democratic Socialism’ is, he responded: “When Donald Trump was a private businessman in New York, he got $800million (£620million) in tax breaks and subsidies to build luxury housing. “That’s called corporate socialism. What democratic socialism is about is saying, ‘Let’s use the federal government to protect the interests of working families.” The most left-wing candidate out of all of the Democratic Party candidates, Mr Sanders has made holding big corporations to account a central theme of his campaign.
Last October, the Vermont Senator unveiled his economic plans to increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 35 percent.
The Sanders campaign stated that the economic plan would “give workers an ownership stake in the companies they work for, break up corrupt corporate mergers and monopolies”.
He added it would “finally make corporations pay their fair share” and asserted that a Sanders presidency would end what he describes as corporate greed ruining the US “once and for all”.
This would seek to undo the policies implemented by President Trump, who pledged in 2017 to enforce substantial tax cuts for higher income taxpayers and corporations.
Trump’s approach to healthcare also moves in the opposite direction to Sanders, as in the same announcement he stated his aims to repeal of a key Obamacare element.
The Obamacare initiative aimed to makes healthcare more affordable for everyone by lowering costs for those who can’t afford it in the US’ insurance bases system.
Sanders did not support Obamacare, but only because he advocates a free healthcare system for all.
Just this week, the President mocked Barack Obama’s initiative, appearing to say that he should have been impeached for it.
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“I was on the picket line in opposition to NAFTA. We heard people tell us how many jobs would be created.
“I didn’t believe that for a second because I understood what the function of NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, and the TPP is, it’s to say to American workers, hey, you are now competing against people in Vietnam who make 56 cents an hour minimum wage.”
Even more akin to Trump’s approach, when asked by CNN if he would use tariffs as a negotiating tool with China, he said: “Yeah of course, if it is used in a rational way within the context of a broad, sensible trade policy. It is one tool that is available.”