WTF 10/30/2024

Trump’s second presidency would be an economic disaster…  

Two key promises of Trump’s pledge to make America great again are based upon Trumptonian core beliefs that the United States has been ripped off for years and taken advantage of economically by almost every other foreign country in existence and that almost every one of those countries systemically release a significant number of people from their prisons and mental institutions so that they can send hundreds of thousands of their most dangerous criminals to America in order to cause added hardship to the U.S. economy.

Those two promises are to ensure the deportation of millions of immigrants and to turn the world’s economic tables to the United States favor by raising tariffs against foreign imports, especially those coming from China.

And if Trump is elected in November and he is allowed  to fulfill those promises then we the people of  the United States of America need to be seriously afraid… very, very, very seriously afraid.

Kimberly Clausing, an economist at UCLA, says very simply, “It is not hyperbolic at all to say this could cause a depression.”

How bad would this depression actually be?

Three economists (Warwick McKibbin of the Australian National University; Megan Hogan and Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics) took the data behind Trump’s policies and fed that info into a multicountry economic model used by various international banks and government agencies to see the financial effects in an attempt to find out.

A July Pew Research Center report claimed that in 2022 unauthorized immigrants represented about 4.8% of the U.S. workforce in 2022 or a number purported to be approximately 8.3 million unauthorized workers.

The economists plugged that number and its relevant information into the economic model. They added in a 60% tariff imposed on all Chinese imports and a 10% tariff on imports from all other countries. They then added in third Trumptonian variable into the equation… Trump’s desire to have the Federal Reserve under the control of the president and instead of maintaining its present political independence to set and steer interest rates and the dollar’s exchange rate in order to stimulate economic growth and lower, with an expectation to terminate, the nation’s trade deficit.

The end result? If Trump gets what he wants?

Essentially economic Armageddon for the United States of America.

Initially, the country’s trade balance would show a surplus.

The problem though would be that the source of that surplus would be due to capital fleeing the United States, which would result in depriving the U.S. economy of resources needed to buy other countries products… or procure needed imports.

For the overwhelming majority of we the people the economic reality would be disastrous. Under Trump’s plan the nation’s gross domestic product would shrink by $8 trillion over a second presidency or by more than a quarter of the nation’s economic output in 2024. Which would result in prices for we the people to buy our daily and necessary goods and services to go up by about 25%.

Additionally all U.S. jobs would be imperiled… employment would pretty much tank, joblessness would be rampant. The U.S. poverty rate would most likely explode, And the America dollar would plummet to depths that had have been rarely seen previously.

Simply put if America deported approximately 5 percent of the workforce that effect would boost inflation (due to rising wages) even as it slowed growth by curbing consumer spending (immigrants buy stuff) are consumers) and businesses with fewer workers to hire would invest less in themselves causing a delay in potential product production and economic recovery and plunge the country into a dire cycle of lower investment and greater job losses.

Various reports say the economist’s model shows that Trump’s deportation plan by itself would eliminate about $6.4 trillion off American output over his new term in office and that his tariff proposals would sucker punch the eventual sinking U.S. economy and the American citizen by raising the price of imports (as well as that of the domestic goods that competed with them) and send inflation increasingly and potentially cataclysmically skyward.

And of course the rest of the world won’t be sitting by just watching the U.S. operate and try to manipulate things economically… they would reciprocate in kind with their first move most likely being to retaliate with tariffs of their own, and by blocking U.S. exports which would  add to an ever slowing of any economic growth in the United States.

And then the  coup de grâce and possible knock blow to the stability of the U.S. economy… Trump controlling the Federal Reserve…  

According to the economists’ model if Trump lowered interest rates to try to stimulate growth the country’s  GDP and employment might get a short-term boost but that growth would be quickly eliminated by increasing and out of control inflation.

And ultimately and finally investors, both domestic and foreign would flee with their money from investing in America’s future and we the people’s ability to survive.  

Understand that during Trump’s presidency he was struggling with the grown-ups in that administration that were constantly deterring his world domination plans as well as learning how things worked in government… 

If elected this November he won’t be bringing any of those adults into his second term and he has a much “improved” idea of how things work in government and how to get things done to his and his oligarchical buddies best advantage.   

In the final analysis the only greatness that a second Trump presidency could achieve would be to greatly consume most of what we the people earn leaving us all with little, if anything to stash away for additional emergencies while the one percent of the one percent simply what amounts to a “tariff tax” that comes nowhere near putting a hurt on their bank accounts as it does for a those folks in America who are the most economically disadvantaged.  

Another thousand words…