It’s being called the “Year of Elections,” and with good reason. More than 80 countries around the world are holding elections in 2024, from tiny Bhutan to India, the world’s biggest democracy, demonstrating the resilience of the democratic process.
The biggest elections took place in the last few months: in India, where more than 640 million people voted in parliamentary races across the country, and in Europe, where 357 million people were eligible to vote for their nations’ representatives to the EU Parliament.
Notably, both elections were broadly peaceful, with all sides accepting the results, albeit at times grudgingly. Despite the presence of authoritarian (and authoritarian-wannabe) leaders in many parts of the world, 2024’s elections show that democracy still works.
For most of ACRA’s members, of course, the year’s biggest election won’t happen until November. And while the number of voters going to the polls in the U.S. this fall will be a good deal smaller than those in India and the EU, our election will have major ramifications for not just America but the rest of the world.
The 2024 U.S. election not only pits the current President against his predecessor; every seat in the U.S. House is up for grabs, as are a third of U.S. Senate seats. Currently, Democrats hold the White House and Senate, and the GOP controls the House. With polls showing that the Biden-Trump rematch could go either way, and with each party holding a slim majority on Capitol Hill, it’s near impossible to predict what the partisan makeup of Washington will be come 2025.
What is somewhat easier to forecast is what the election outcomes may mean for CRM. It’s not hard to divine what a re-elected President Biden or an elected-for-a-second time former President Trump would do in office, since we can simply look at what they did in their respective terms in office. And in the case of Trump, his supporters have put forth detailed plans, called Project 2025, of what they hope he will do in a second term in office.
At this point, it’s important to make clear: ACRA does not endorse candidates for elective office. And regardless of who is in power, ACRA will work to advocate for the interests of the CRM industry.
With that out of the way, here are a few issues where the differences between the White House aspirants are the greatest:
Environmental and Historic Preservation Reviews
The contrasts between the two candidates are pretty stark here. In 2020, then-President Trump instituted changes to NEPA that exempted classes of federal actions from NEPA review and restricted the types of project effects to be examined during the NEPA review process. Almost immediately upon taking office, President Biden undid the Trump changes, and added new provisions to ensure that the impacts of proposed projects on historic and cultural resources are considered. Should Trump retake the White House, expect him to try to return to his 2020 NEPA reforms.
Also expect a Trump Interior Department to reinstitute plans announced at the very end of Trump’s term, but nixed by Biden, to establish time limits on Section 106 reviews and discourage alternative mitigation measures as a tool to balance preservation and development needs. Reinstating so-called Secretarial Order 3389, Coordinating and Clarifying National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 Reviews, is included in Project 2025’s list of recommendations.
Historic Preservation and Cultural Resources Funding
Thanks to the advocacy of ACRA and its preservation partners, federal investments in historic preservation, most notably through the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF), have risen in recent years through both Democratic and Republican administrations. And the last long-term reauthorization of the HPF was signed into law by former President Trump.
There is bipartisan support for historic preservation, but rising federal deficits could impact funding moving forward, regardless of who wins the White House.
The Interior Department as a whole, however, may fare worse. In a recent interview, Trump suggested he would try to cut the Department, lumping it in with other environmental agencies that, in his words, “They make it impossible to do anything,”
Business Policy
Another area where the two candidates diverge is on business policy, in particular business tax rates. The tax cuts that former President Trump signed into law in 2017 expire in 2025, meaning whomever is in the White House will have a big say in what comes next. The 2017 bill lowered the corporate tax rate from 28% to 21%, and created a special deduction for the owners of certain pass-through entities who pay business taxes on their individual tax returns.
According to CNN, “In keeping with Biden’s long-standing policy promises, the president has said that he would allow the income tax cuts for the rich to expire while protecting those who earn less than $400,000 annually from any tax hikes. Plus, he has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, up from the 21% rate that the [2017 law] put in place permanently – which, along with higher taxes on the wealthy, would help pay for extending tax cuts for most other Americans, he argues.”
On the other hand, Trump recently told a group of business executives that he would like to cut the corporate rate even lower, to 20%.
Over the coming months, ACRA will continue to monitor the plans of each candidate to better gauge the impact of the election om the CRM industry. In the meantime, make sure you are registered to vote. In a year when hundreds of millions of people all over the planet are going to the polls, don’t be left out.