NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump told a group of executives and industry leaders Thursday that he wants to lead a “national economic renaissance” by slashing regulations to boost energy production, embracing cryptocurrencies and drastically cutting government spending as well as corporate taxes for companies that produce in the U.S.

The GOP presidential nominee, speaking to the Economic Club of New York, said he would issue a national emergency declaration to achieve a massive increase in the domestic energy supply and eliminate 10 current regulations for every new regulation that government adopts.

He said Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who also owns the social media platform X, has agreed to head a commission to perform a financial audit of the federal government that would save trillions of dollars.

“My plan will rapidly defeat inflation, quickly bring down prices and reignite explosive economic growth,” Trump claimed.

The former president also suggested that his plans to increase tariffs on foreign imports would solve seemingly unrelated challenges such as the rising cost of child care in the U.S.

During the event, Trump was asked about his plans to drive down child care costs to help more women join the workforce.

“Child care is child care, it’s something you have to have in this country,” he said. Then, he said his plans to tax imports from foreign nations at higher levels would “take care” of such problems.

“We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s — relatively speaking — not very expensive, compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in,” he said.

Trump has embraced tariffs as he appeals to working-class voters who oppose free-trade deals and the outsourcing of factories and jobs. But in his speech Thursday and his economic plans as a whole, Trump made what a broader — to some, implausible — promise on tariffs: that they can raise trillions of dollars to fund his agenda without those costs being passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

His campaign attacks Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ proposals to increase corporate tax rates by saying they would ultimately be borne by workers in the form of fewer jobs and lower incomes.

Yet taxes on foreign imports would have a similar effect with businesses and consumers having to absorb those costs in the form of higher prices.

The United States had $3.8 trillion worth of imports last year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Trump in the past has talked about universal tariffs of at least 10%, if not higher, though he has not spelled out details about how these taxes would be implemented.

Trump touted his economic accomplishments while in office, including jobs created on his watch, cuts on taxes and regulations, and his efforts to renegotiate trade deals.

Trump has previously floated the idea of chopping the 21% corporate tax rate to 15%, but on Thursday clarified that would be solely for companies that produce in the U.S. The corporate rate had been 35% when he became president in 2017, and he later signed a bill lowering it. Trump has also proposed to not tax tips or Social Security income.

Trump and Harris want to take the rate in opposite directions while arguing that each is better than the other for American business. It’s one of the many ways the two nominees have laid out sharply different views on the economy, a critical issue in this year’s election.

The grab bag of tax cut proposals that Trump is campaigning on could collectively cost as much as $10.5 trillion over a decade, a massive sum that would exceed the combined budgets of every domestic federal agency.

Even if Congress were to eliminate every dollar of nondefense discretionary spending — projected to be $9.8 trillion over the next 10 years — it still wouldn’t offset the estimated expense of the wide-ranging tax cuts Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, have floated in recent weeks.

The price tag is based on rough, initial estimates from tax and budget specialists because the Trump campaign hasn’t released detailed policy plans for its tax promises.

Harris also has proposed a few large tax cuts — she would exempt tips from taxation and expand the child tax credit — but the impact on the nation’s finances pales in comparison. She calls for offsetting the lost income, which one think tank estimates at $2 trillion, with tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals.

Harris has called for raising the 21% corporate tax rate to 28%. Her policy proposals this week have been geared toward promoting more entrepreneurship, a bet that making it easier to start companies will increase middle-class prosperity.

The Harris campaign issued a memo accusing Trump of wanting to hurt the middle class, arguing his ideas would expand the national debt and shrink economic growth and job creation.

“He wants our economy to serve billionaires and big corporations,” the campaign said.

Bloomberg News contributed.