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Trump is Bad for The Economy
Not “worse,” but really bad.
Oblige this aging boomer an observation about what the economic future holds under a Trump administration — we won’t be sure if it’s gonna’ be ‘worse,’ but we can share if it’s really bad.
And so far ‘this’ is bad.
What’s ‘it,’ you ask?
That’s my point: there is no ‘it’ with Trump at the helm. America has an economy. Trump does not have an economic plan. Or if he does have an economic plan, he’s not going to share it. This is by design: by manipulating America’s anxiety about a well-performing economy, Trump accumulates more power.
Consider that Trump has no definitive critique of his opponents’ position on the economy, except that she shares blame with the President for undoing Trump’s success — the economy was great under my watch (except for the pandemic) and now America is worse off.
Well, we don’t know that.
We don’t even know how much influence the President — past, current or future — has on the performance of economic markets. When interviewed in February during the Davos Economic Summit, captains of the financial community wouldn’t predict that Trump would win in November; they stated publicly that they could not assume a world in which he might lose, ergo, they were preparing for a Trump victory. It’s what risk assessors do.
Duh.
Consider that what Trump is offering voters is stuff America already has. He is repackaging old ideas. He is branding old financial tactics as stuff he has thought of. We already have tariffs. We already have corporate tax rates. We already have a Federal Reserve. (1) We already have ‘no taxes on tips,’ primarily because they are mostly in cash.
Consider what we heard September 24 at a Trump speech at the Johnny Mercer Theatre in Savannah, Georgia.
If elected, Trump would lower the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for “those who make their product in the USA.” By not stipulating how in a ‘global economy,’ his administration would manage ‘who makes their product in the U.S.A. Trump shields his audience from the fact that we already have protections limiting offshoring production. Tweaking the corporate tax rate won’t add ‘more protection.’ What lowering the…