I proudly voted for Reagan in ‘80 and ‘84, and only didn’t vote for him in ‘76 because I was 15. To date, he is (IMHO) the finest President that we’ve had in my lifetime, and probably since Coolidge. Nonetheless, the man wasn’t perfect, and he signed some legislation that wasn’t so great. Sometimes, he got snookered by the Dems (look at the ‘86 immigration bill, the ‘86 FOPA limits on full autos, and Iran-Contra - the guy got USED by his people as well as opponents, possibly related to him being in the early stages of Alzheimers at the time). I really wish that we could wipe out 1986 from Reagan’s Presidency.
WRT the ‘86 Tax Act, I graduated law and business school in 1987, and went right to work for a national accounting firm doing taxes. The ‘86 Act, which was taught a great length in my final year in school, was positive for the economy in some areas, to be sure, but one of the negative things that it did was to effectively destroy the real estate market - which has ALWAYS been a huge part of the economy. It radically changed the depreciation schedules over only 4 years (the phase-in period for the depreciation changes), which is the blink of an eye for long-term real estate investors. These changes led DIRECTLY to the S&L crisis in ‘89 and ‘90, which almost took Citicorp and a bunch of other large banks down the drain with it. It was the biggest financial crisis since the ‘74-’75 recession, and the biggest until the real (Democrat-inspired) big crisis in 2008.
So the fact that Trump, then ONLY a real estate investor, was against it is no surprise. It probably cost him hundreds of millions of dollars, and arguably led to economic conditions that caused his casinos to go belly up (thus costing him even more hundreds of millions or more over time)...and he was far from alone - people all over the country lost their life’s savings because of a tax law change that was shoved down everyone’s throats over only a 4-year period of time, and they couldn’t possibly sell out because every single potential buyer knew the facts and either wasn’t buying, or was buying for $0.25 on the dollar at most.
What would be a surprise, and what would show Trump to be a damned fool, is if he was FOR the ‘86 Act.
Reagan was wrong on this as he was wrong on amnesty.