It Just Doesn’t Work That Way

It is amazing how President Trump labels his failures as “success;” his base revels as his statements are repeated on Fox News as truth, and the rest of the world simply rolls its eyes in judgmental acknowledgment of reality. The debacle of the President’s recent attempted visit to recovering shooting victims was obvious in the recent murderous assaults – one from an angry Bernie Sanders-supporting leftist (Dayton) and another from a Trump-inspired hate-filled right-winger (El Paso) – where they simply wanted nothing to do with him. His statement that his clearly divisive rhetoric was “unifying the nation” was ludicrous in and of itself. Only white supremacists understood that the unifying message was simply that they were now the focus of that purported “unification” to the exclusion of virtually anyone else.

The denuclearization of North Korea has gone nowhere fast. Laced with photo ops (above at the DMZ) but no substantive progress, that détente continues to be touted as success. “President Trump says he received yet another ‘very beautiful’ letter from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Thursday [8/8], adding that he thinks there will be another meeting between the two…  Mr. Trump teased reporters on the White House South Lawn Friday [8/9] by saying he would love to show them the three-page letter but won't, though he later said he might release the ‘results of the letter.’” CBSNews.com, August 9^th. That’s the story Donald Trump wants the world to believe.

But just as that letter was hand-delivered to the White House, “North Korea said Wednesday [8/7] leader Kim Jong Un supervised a live-fire demonstration of newly developed, short-range ballistic missiles intended to send a warning to the United States and South Korea over their joint military exercises… The official Korean Central News Agency said two missiles launched from a western airfield flew across the country and over the area surrounding the capital, Pyongyang, before accurately hitting an island target off its eastern coast.” Bloomberg.com, August 7^th. Reality. Kim calls the shots. Trump must follow.

How about Trump’s immigration plan? It was just reflected in a raid on several poultry processing plants in Mississippi leading to the detention of approximately 700 purportedly undocumented immigrants (with more than a few U.S. citizens), which resulted in a yet-uncalculated number of children, many of who were indeed U.S. citizens, coming home after the first day of school only to find their parents missing. Despite global opprobrium and court orders mandating an end to the separation of children, in the wake of an El Paso shooter who openly admitted he had targeted an “invasion” of ethnic Hispanics, Donald Trump watched the progress of the raids on television and glowed at how these most recent raids sent a powerful message of deterrence to aspiring border-crossers. Little children crying made no difference.

The economy? Using metrics based on “averages” – where high earners and the rising wealth of the one-percenters makes the overall numbers look good even as most of us have seen little or no economic improvement – Donald Trump loves to brag about “his” economic success, a recovery that clearly began with the prior administration. Some credit to Trump policies, the growth of consumer demand (laced with growing credit card debt), has to be accepted, but tax reform act… truly marginal. That cornerstone of his touted economic success, the massive GOP corporate tax cut that seriously exploded our federal deficit, simply failed to produce the desired economic result.

“The Trump administration’s tax cuts have had little direct impact on business investment decisions, according to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund, which runs contrary to the White House’s portrayal of lower corporate rates as a boon for capital spending.

“Almost all growth in business investment since 2017 can be attributed to private-sector expectations that strong sales growth will continue — in part because of the personal income tax cuts that boosted demand — rather than the tax incentive for companies, IMF economists Emanuel Kopp, Daniel Leigh and Suchanan Tambunlertchai said in a blog post Thursday [8/8]… They cited the findings of their recent study, which was also incorporated into the institution’s latest report on the U.S. economy in June.

“The tax reductions may also be having a smaller effect on investment than expected because of the decades-long rise of corporate concentration in industries including airlines, pharmaceuticals and technology, the authors said. They said that because such companies already hold market power, they aren’t necessarily re-investing their earnings in production and other business areas.” Bloomberg.com, August 10^th. The tax cuts generated dividends and stock buybacks but had little benefit for most Americans.

Trump’s abysmal failure in bringing China to heel via a trade war will cost American farmers billions (or more) well into the future. Their recent currency devaluation only increased their global competitive edge despite Trump’s tariff increases. China has readjusted their supply chain to replace American agricultural products, rather permanently, with produce from other nations, notably Brazil. The plight of American soybean farmers is a major case in point. While China accounted for roughly a third of our soybean exports prior to the trade war, that market is unlikely ever to rise to even half of former levels.

Even with Trump’s socialized payments to impacted farmers, destined to end in the immediate future, American farmers will be slammed for a long time to come. Soybeans at that level of bulk will not find new buyers of sufficient volume to replace former Chinese demand. For those who tell those agricultural sellers to replant their fields with alternative crops, they seem to forget that soybean farmers invested billions in specialized equipment and will have to spend billions more to retool. Waste. Time to adjust. Expense.

“The U.S. trade tensions with China and other nations are further curbing investment growth. ‘Policy makers can support further growth in business investment by reducing economic policy uncertainty, including by resolving trade-related tensions,’ the IMF post said.” Bloomberg. Trump seems to need the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates to offset his economic failures, or the resultant dip in US economic metrics could cost him vital support for his 2020 reelection bid. Losing seems to be becoming the new American pastime. We just cannot afford to let that continue and expect to hold together as a nation.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and this level of constant failure, some of it undoable, should tell American voters that the United States may well be unable to survive if Trump is reelected.