Love Trump’s Economic Policies, But What Are They?

 

“While Trump promises to ‘make the foreigners pay,’ our analysis shows his policies will end up making Americans pay the most.” 

 From a detailed economic analysis from the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics, September 2024

There is a vast cadre of voters, clothespins on their noses at Trump’s deeply flawed character, who support him because of his “economic policies and expertise.” Expertise from a man who inherited his initial capital base, who almost had to bankrupt his major holdings requiring a life-saving bailout in the early 1990s by a consortium of Chinese lenders – whom he sued and lost big time – who has bankrupted a host of his companies (stiffing ordinary workers in the process), who along with his main company have been criminally convicted of falsifying official business records (low values for taxing authorities, high values to lenders on the same assets), who had to pay $25 million to settle a fraud action by students at the failed Trump University, with Trump products from Vodka to an airline that tanked, whose Trump Media & Technology (which operates Truth Social and is 57% owned by Trump) plunged about 80% since going public, and whose own alma mater, Penn/Wharton, projects budget deficits based on his discernible policies at double their projections for Kamala Harris’ economic policies????!!! Wanna buy a Trump Bible, some gold sneakers or Trump-endorsed crypto where 18-year-old NYU freshmen Baron Trump is a senior advisor? Is this the resume of a “trusted candidate with strong business credentials”?

In any objective company, such a track record would have long-since resulted in a pink slip noting “You’re fired.” Imagine looking for a financial advisor, who somehow makes enough money to live large as his fellow investors writhe in pain, with his background and saying, “oh yeah, he’s for me!” So much for his “business expertise”! Aside from the cost of deporting millions of lower paid workers for labor that that US residents will not do, this alone will push consumer prices up big time. But wait, there’s more, so much more!

Next let’s take a deeper dive into Donald John Trump’s stated economic goals. Maybe we should start with an objective determination from Trump’s own choice for his undergraduate education (he has no graduate degree): the August 26th Penn/Wharton Budget Model, examining his stated economic policies: “The 2024 Trump presidential campaign has endorsed several tax-related policy proposals. The Trump campaign supports extending the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and recommends additional reductions in the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. In addition, the Trump campaign favors eliminating income taxes on Social Security benefits.

“Like our analysis of the 2024 Harris campaign, we do not include the non-taxation of ‘tips’ earned by service workers as originally recommended in public comments by Trump. The 10-year budget cost could vary significantly depending on the ability to reclassify current sources of income as ‘tips’ to the mutual benefit of employers and employees. The ability to reclassify income is often a major source of revenue response in conventional tax scoring. As such, a considerable number of additional details would be needed to score this provision.

“The Trump campaign has also put forward several trade policy proposals to impose new taxes on imported goods and services, including a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports and much higher targeted tariffs. Key implementation details, however, are missing. While new import taxes and tariffs could raise several trillion dollars in new revenue over the next decade, they could also lead to revenue losses due to potential retaliatory actions from other governments and other economic dynamics. The implementation and interactions with Pillar 2 also remain unanswered…

“We project that conventionally estimated tax revenue falls by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years, producing an equivalent amount of primary deficits. Accounting for economic feedback effects, primary deficits increase by $4.1 trillion over the same period.” As Jackie Calmes asks in her editorial in the September 26th Los Angeles Times piece, “Voters disdain Trump but ‘liked his policies.’ What are they talking about?... If you think the U.S. was better off under Trump 1.0, check the record…”

“What policies? The voters rarely say, nor do reporters follow up. Curious minds, not least mine, want to know: What are they talking about?... Trump was by far the most ignorant on policy of seven presidents I’ve covered, and four years in office didn’t educate him: As former advisors attest, he refused to do homework, trusting to his instincts. Trump had positions on many issues, often ill-informed and wrong-headed. As president he executed policies, of course, though the best known — cutting taxes, for example, and seating right-wing federal judges — were largely the work of Republicans in Congress.

“Filling in Trump’s policy vacuum was the impetus behind MAGA Republicans’ massive — and massively unpopular — Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term. But forget prospective policies. Does it really make sense to remember the Trump 1.0 initiatives fondly?... Are policies on the economy and immigration what these voters have in mind? Polls consistently show more voters prefer Trump over Kamala Harris in these areas… First the economy: [In 2016,] Trump inherited a growing one from the Obama administration, and left a pandemic-ravaged economy to Biden and Harris. His big edge in voters’ perceptions about economic matters reflects in large part their dismay over the rise in inflation on Biden’s watch, and the higher interest rates set by the Federal Reserve to tame it. But inflation has been a global problem, mostly a consequence of the spurt in post-pandemic demand for goods. Had Trump been reelected in 2020, he would surely have faced rising prices as well.

“With prices still elevated, voters haven’t yet felt how much inflation has abated, faster here than in other nations, and [in mid-September] the Fed finally cut interest rates, and signaled more cuts ahead. Meanwhile, growth in the economy’s output and employment has been greater under Biden-Harris than under Trump, despite Trump’s lies and voters’ vibes to the contrary.

“Trump had two main economic policies, and he’s now promising more of the same: tariffs, which raised prices on many goods Americans buy and cost jobs in import-reliant industries (Biden kept most of the tariffs in place, alas), and deep tax cuts that favored the rich and piled up debt. The $8.5 trillion in new debt that Trump ran up was twice as much as under Biden, and he did far less than Biden has done to trim annual deficits… We know they can’t be thinking of Trump’s major infrastructure initiative or his better, less costly alternative to the Affordable Care Act because, despite repeated promises, he never came up with even ‘concepts of a plan’ for either. ‘Two weeks,’ he’d say, and all would be revealed. We’re still waiting. Meanwhile Biden enacted an infrastructure program and expanded Obamacare.

“Speaking of inaction, for four years Trump did nothing to acknowledge let alone mitigate climate change, even as its effects were increasingly evident in eroded coastlines, droughts, wildfires and extreme weather patterns. If a do-nothing policy is what some voters liked, they’ll certainly get more of that should Trump get elected: He’s vowed to dismantle Biden’s landmark climate law, with its clean energy projects, and ‘drill, baby, drill. [Even as US oil extraction is higher now.]

“Amid the biggest crisis of his term, Trump’s policy to deal with COVID-19 was ultimately malpractice: Delays and misfires have been deemed responsible for tens of thousands of preventable deaths. Trump spurred on the historic development of a vaccine against the disease, only to surrender to anti-vax sentiment. It was left to Biden to get shots in Americans’ arms.’”

Further, the economic report noted in the above quote (The International Economic Implications of a Second Trump Presidency presented by Warwick McKibbin, Megan Hogan, and Marcus Noland) tells us that “If all of Mr. Trump’s economic plans came to fruition, the study projected that by 2028 consumer prices would be as much as 28 percent higher than current forecasts, with the inflation rate peaking at 9.3 percent. Gross domestic product could be 9.7 percent lower, shrinking output and dampening consumer demand. And employment — as measured by hours worked — could be down 9 percent because of the shock to the labor supply.” NY Times summary, September 26th. Trump is a self-professed “stable genius,” but apparently that does not include in economics. Trump hates facts, because only “alternative facts” support his economic theories.

I’m Peter Dekom, and those who believe Trump to be a business maven seem to conflate his ostensible “gold faucet” lifestyle with a knowledgeable economic policy leader who knows what best for the nation… but he does know what’s best for himself.