Defy 'Stalinist' global warming rules and burn much more coal, says Trump's key economic adviser 

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China is ‘stealing’ hundreds of billions of dollars from America. Regulations on climate change are ‘Stalinistic’. And America can earn more than $100billion from global companies by cutting their tax rates.

If this sounds like the extreme rhetoric of America’s President-elect Donald Trump, that’s because they are the words of his senior economic adviser, Stephen Moore.

A former adviser to the Reagan administration, Moore has the ear of ‘The Donald’ on economic issues.

Strategy: Stephen Moore wants corporate tax rates to be slashed

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday just hours after Trump’s election victory, he outlined a vision for the US and world economy that will fuel fury among critics, but may also calm fears that the planet’s biggest economy may be about to close its doors on the world. And there was good news for Britain as he hailed the idea of a US-UK trade deal.

As well as having worked for Reagan when he was only in his 20s, Moore has sat on the board of the Wall Street Journal and is chief economist for the US think-tank the Heritage Foundation.

And he is in no doubt that the rest of the world will be affected by Trump’s Presidency. ‘If we get it wrong, the whole world gets it wrong,’ he declares. ‘But I think this is going to be like the 1980s. We are going to get it right. And the rest of the world will follow. Britain and France and Spain and other nations will say, “Ah, that’s what you do! You cut taxes. You get regulations off the back of business.”

‘This could be the start of an expansion like we saw in the 1980s and 1990s – the greatest period of wealth creation and poverty reduction in the history of mankind.’

As the election results showed Trump heading for victory, stock markets in the Far East slumped. Stock markets in London and New York and the currency markets all gyrated wildly as they opened. Then they settled and rose strongly throughout the week.

Fear focused on the view that Trump was opposed to free trade and that his criticism of free trade deals would mean America shutting its doors for business. In this regard Moore is not quite pure Trump.

‘I am a free trader as Donald knows, and he and I agree to disagree on that,’ says Moore. But having implied that Trump is not very free trade-minded, Moore tries a different tack. ‘Donald has told me: “I am not an isolationist. I am not a protectionist, I just want to make sure we have free trade, but fair trade.” ’.

But when it comes to trade with China, Moore himself speaks pure Trump, furious at the longstanding claim that Chinese groups are copying US technology.

‘I think the idea that they can continue to steal our intellectual property whether it’s computer software or drugs must end. We are a country that produces intellectual property. That is more and more what we do in America and we can’t keep allowing China to steal $200billion worth of it and not compensate us.

‘Maybe this means saying: “China, if you want trade with us, if you want to sell us all your goods, you’ve got to stop cheating and stealing.” ’

Burning issue: Moore said the US  should be producing as much coal as they can

For post-Brexit Britain, of course, the future of trade deals is crucial. Obama famously said that the UK outside the EU would be ‘at the back of the queue’. Moore is more positive.

‘I think a more open and free trade system with Britain would be very much in America’s interest and in Britain’s interest,’ he says.

On tax, however, Moore is on solid ground. He is the architect of Trump’s tax plans. Moore will not speculate on whether he may be offered a job in the White House, but he wants to have a hand in tax policy.

‘There are a lot of people who are hungry for those government jobs. I am not one of those people. What I would like to do is to help get this tax cut passed, because I helped put it together for him. I want to get that over the goal line.’

Moore’s plan for Trump is to cut corporate tax rates in the US to 15 per cent, from their current levels of 35 per cent. He accepts this may not quite be possible.

‘Look, I don’t know if we can get down to 15 per cent. The house [Congress] has proposed 20 per cent. So somewhere between 15 and 20 is what we are looking at, which would be cutting the corporate tax in half.’

The other great plan is to get US global corporations to bring some of the money home that they have been keeping abroad. This is the same cash, stored up by groups like Apple, Amazon, Google and others which has so enraged taxpayers in the UK.

While they have paid little tax in this country, they have paid next to nothing on these sums in America. Under US law their revenues overseas are only taxed if brought back to the US. Global giants like these have about £1.4trillion (yes, trillion) stashed outside the US. Moore has proposed – and Trump apparently backs – the idea of allowing this cash to be repatriated to America and taxed at just ten per cent.

Climate change: Moore believes stringent controls on energy will do nothing to solve it

‘Repatriation is going to be a big deal. US companies will be able to bring their money back to the US, whether it’s located in Britain, China, Mexico or the Bahamas or wherever for a rate of 10 per cent, and so create jobs here. We think that is a smart policy, that will lead to $100billion to $200billion in revenue for government that we can use for infrastructure and that may get reinvested in jobs and factories in America. That is a central part of our plan.’

He is open about the fact that this could mean a flood of US companies in the technology and drug industries leaving places like Ireland.

If Moore is right and US groups use such a change to haul their loot back to the US, some of it may also be available for dividend payouts to shareholders in US corporations.

‘I believe we can get the business tax work done within the first 100 to 150 days of the administration,’ says Moore. Such immediate hopes may explain why the US stock market jumped on news of Trump’s victory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 2.8 per cent since election night.

But Moore claims the benefits will be longer term too. ‘I believe our goals should be 4 per cent growth for five years. That’s up from 1.5 per cent growth from Obama.’

Obama is the source of most of America’s ills, as far as Moore is concerned

Obama is the source of most of America’s ills as far as Moore is concerned. ‘The reason the world economy has done so poorly for the last few years is because there has been no leadership. Obama is not an economic leader. He does not know anything about economics and almost everything he has done with the US economy has been wrong.

‘Massive government spending, massive taxes, raising the minimum wage, government intervention in almost every area, printing money like it’s going out of style.’

And few things about the Obama era rankle Moore worse than climate change measures and the shrinking of the American coal mining industry. ‘Obama has put tens of thousands of our coal miners out of work. These are great middle-class workers. Hillary and Obama had this ludicrous idea that the government would build 500million solar panels. What are you talking about? We’ve got the cheapest natural gas in 100 years. We should be producing every single barrel of oil we’ve got, producing as much coal as we can and producing as much natural gas as we can and become an energy superpower.’

As for the Paris Accords on climate change under which governments have agreed to cut carbon emissions, Moore is blunt: ‘That is the stupidest agreement ever. You are not going to solve climate change by government. It happens through technological change, through economic growth and new technologies, not through Stalinistic regulations.’

We are speaking almost 12 hours after the Trump victory was confirmed. Moore, 56, has had little sleep and he claims he does not have the same energy as Trump.

But he is clearly brimming with the adrenaline of victory and not just for Trump. ‘You may have heard the Chicago Cubs have won the World Series,’ he says referring to the baseball. ‘I am from Chicago, so this has been a big week for me. The Cubs won the World Series and Donald Trump won the Presidency. It does not get better than that.’