Trump’s rambling answer to a child care question, deconstructed

(CNN) — Former President Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance were both asked essentially the same question while thousands of miles apart this week:

How would they bring down the cost of child care, which is a barrier to people having children and a major drain on parents?

Given that the Republican ticket is built around the idea of reversing inflation and appealing to “real” Americans, and that Vance in particular has argued, joking or not, that “childless cat ladies” are a threat to American democracy, it seems like the kind of subject for which they would have something to say.

But the two men gave remarkably different answers, neither of which seem likely to bring down the cost of child care.

Vance, speaking to a conservative activist at an Arizona church on Wednesday, thinks parents should look to grandparents, aunts and uncles for those who have them, and also suggested cutting down on training and certification requirements for day care workers. That answer, at least, focuses on the issue at hand, but it won’t satisfy any parent or potential parents who don’t live near their extended family or whose extended family can’t afford to work for free.

What came out of Trump’s mouth, however, in his talk with the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, was not a direct answer about child care, which he dismissed as ultimately not a very big problem and not that expensive to fix compared with the money he will raise from tariffs.

You could charitably say that he pivoted from the child care question back to his talking points for the day, which had to do with his plan to place taxes, also known as tariffs, on all imports coming into the US.

However, if you have spent any time in recent months listening to Trump’s words in depth – and if you haven’t, you should – his speech at the Republican National Convention, for instance, veered from prepared remarks to wandering musings.

On Friday, he dedicated much of a news conference in New York about his legal problems to a recounting of old sexual misconduct allegations he has denied. It had the effect of reminding people about the allegations.

His response to the child care question, the subject of some ribbing by his political opponents, could accurately be described as a ramble without an answer. It’s worth looking closer at an issue that affects so many Americans.

For more context, CNN’s Tami Luhby looked at the broad strokes of Trump’s general claim, that the new tariffs will pay for Americans’ child care, and found it is not at all clear how that would work. Read Luhby’s report.

The child care question was put to Trump by Reshma Saujani, founder of Moms First and Girls Who Code. Spoiler alert: Saujani was not satisfied with what Trump had to say.

“I don’t even think he’s actually thought about this, and parents are suffering,” she later said on TikTok, arguing families are being crushed by the cost of child care.

While she might not have been expecting much from Trump’s answer, the question as she posed it on stage was detailed and not at all partisan. Here’s what she said:

Saujani is mostly right on her facts. That $122 billion figure comes from a 2023 study by the nonpartisan nonprofit group Council for a Strong America. Luhby reported in May about another report that found in 11 states and Washington, DC, parents with two kids in a child care center could expect to pay at least twice as much for child care as for typical rent. CNN’s Matt Egan has also reported on the child care crisis.

So, this is not a new issue. But here’s what Trump had to say:

Trump’s off to a good start here. When she worked in the White House, his daughter Ivanka did help add provisions to Trump’s tax cut law that doubled the child tax credit to $2,000 per child for millions of Americans, according to a CNN fact check.

However, those increases were not granted to the millions of children whose parents don’t make enough to pay income tax. Democrats would later further expand the child tax credit by up to an additional $1,600 and also gave the credit as cash even to families who don’t pay income taxes. That additional bump and expanding it to all parents was credited with cutting the child poverty rate nearly in half in 2021. But Democrats failed to get the votes for a longer-term expansion of that experiment.

Vice President Kamala Harris has promised to try to permanently extend and expand that credit, and Vance, not the Trump campaign, has also suggested he supports an expansion, but details are sketchy.

Even Trump’s doubling of the credit to $2,000 is set to expire next year, so this will be a key issue for whoever wins the White House. Luhby has written extensively about the child tax credit.

This is where Trump stops making much sense:

Yes, you do have to have child care. But what are these numbers he’s talking about?

So Trump has moved from the cost of child care to the taxes – tariffs – he plans to impose on imports.

Egan has written about the widely held fear among economists that Trump’s proposal to place a new 60% tariff tax on goods from China and a 10% across-the-board tariff on goods from other countries would mostly just be passed along to consumers and not replace income tax for the government. Trump’s not listening to those warnings.

Hear that, parents? The cost of child care is small change compared with all the money the US is going to be bringing in from Trump’s tariffs. What you’re not hearing is a concrete proposal for a tax credit or a program to transform those tariff dollars Trump is sure the US government will be swimming in into help for affording child care.

Repeat: Child care – actually not very expensive, per Trump.

Yep. Very good question.

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