In 2020, President Joe Biden ran on the platform of repealing former President Donald Trump’s signature tax legislation, promising, “I’ll move to eliminate Trump’s tax cuts” on Day One. Yet lo and behold, Biden left the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act intact when he enacted his own tax legislation, the Green New Deal-inspired Inflation Reduction Act.

Now Biden is running for reelection on the promise of allowing the Trump tax cuts to expire, tweeting, “That tax cut is going to expire. If I’m reelected, it’s going to stay expired.”

Biden and the Democrats didn’t follow through with their promise to repeal the TCJA because the tax bill was the opposite of what they portrayed it to be.

If the electorate gives Republicans the chance, they should make the Trump tax reforms permanent and enhance the provisions that will encourage interstate and international competitiveness for decades to come.

The TCJA is packed with bipartisan, common-sense tax reforms coupled with broad tax relief. Even the New York Times belatedly admitted that most people received a substantial tax cut under the TCJA, writing, “To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained—and misleading—effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase.”

The TCJA simplified the individual income tax, lowered rates across the board, and expanded the standard deduction so fewer families would need to itemize. These changes were paid for in part by capping the federal deductibility of state and local taxes paid. The SALT cap is important because it leverages interstate competition to encourage sound fiscal policies at both the state and federal levels.

America’s long-run fiscal health is in a dire condition, but there are bright spots at the state level that should be encouraged through enhanced interstate competition. The TCJA’s SALT cap accomplished this goal by removing the federal subsidy for the tax-and-spend policies of profligate states.

Large Sun Belt states such as Texas and Florida have capitalized on their competitive advantages and 0% income taxes by attracting new residents from less competitive jurisdictions such as California and New York. This feedback loop encourages sustainable pro-growth policies in states that gain residents while sending an essential signal to states that drive away residents. Competitive state policies are encouraged all around.

In addition, capping the federal deductibility of state taxes indirectly caps how high federal tax rates can go. High-income residents of California and New York City pay nearly 15% in state and local income taxes. After the federal government takes its bite, they are left with less than half their earnings.

So long as state income taxes cannot be deducted on federal returns, progressive lawmakers from California and New York will think twice before raising federal rates because of the intolerably high total tax burden they would impose on their own donor bases. Thus, the SALT cap acts as an indirect restraint on federal tax rates as well.

The TCJA also aced international competitiveness by slashing corporate rates, eliminating the punishment for locating corporate headquarters in the United States, and providing full expensing for capital investment in the U.S. This last measure, full expensing, should be expanded across the tax code to boost America’s international competitiveness amid a global industrial arms race.

Since 2021, the federal government has allocated trillions of dollars in spending and targeted tax credits to reshore industries such as chip fabrication and green energy projects. Yet the tax code’s treatment of normal capital investment has worsened during the same period because TCJA full expensing provisions have been allowed to partially expire.

Entrepreneurs are forced to wait five years before they can write off the cost of their research investments, forcing many to pay income taxes before they have income. It takes as long as 20 years to write off capex in machinery and equipment, and nearly 40 years to amortize the cost of new plant and facilities. These timelines are disconnected from America’s need to rapidly research, reindustrialize, and reshore critical supply chains and defense production.

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Full expensing, which allows full cost recovery for new capex, should be made permanent for all asset classes in the tax code. And it should be applied across all asset classes — research, machinery and equipment, and plant and facilities — to set the stage for decades of industrial revitalization.

Despite Biden’s deceptive talking points, the Trump tax reforms were a generational accomplishment for all people. They must be made permanent in order to encourage interstate competition and America’s essential reindustrialization.

Michael Lucci is a Visiting Economic Policy Fellow at State Policy Network.