Trump’s Disastrous Economic Policies

Stagflation?

Trump’s deportation of undocumented immigrants will raise the prices of those industries that use them as employees: construction, restaurants, and agriculture. That will cause inflation for each of those industries and shortages in each. An already inadequate housing market will become more expensive causing fewer housing starts, we will have massive food shortages as crops rot in the fields, and restaurants will go under or raise their prices.

His tariffs will raise the price of everything we import which is just about everything. Food prices will increase even more than they would if we kept the undocumented working in the fields. Raw materials, machines, computers, cars, food….everything we import will cost more to the US, not the importers.

One final nail in the coffin of our economy and competitiveness: if he raises tariffs, all those countries that import to us will find other countries to sell their goods. Yes, tariffs can work to increase domestic production of those things we need, and it will increase employment to build worksites and products, so there’s that but it will be a steep climb and those activities will cost money.

Corporations often get government money to build those things, which will raise our debt as Trump gives away $3.5 million to every wealthy individual above a certain threshold, and Elmo & other morbidly rich, as Thom Hartmann aptly describes them, will insist on taxing what’s left of the middle class and working poor and borrowing yet more money. Trump saddled us with over $8 trillion in principal and early interest payments in his 4 years and trillions more as we continue for decades to pay those interest payments. To date, according to economist Richard Woolf, we already pay about 38% of federal revenue in debt payments.