On Tuesday, 2016 Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump gave an on-teleprompter speech about job creation in Oscar the Grouch’s living room – before a giant wall of trash. Yes, a wall of trash.
That wasn’t symbolic, although it could have been had someone set the trash on fire.
Trump’s entire plan to create jobs relies on trade protectionism – the single most debunked economic fallacy of the last two centuries, an idea so bad that it has largely reduced Latin America, which bought into “dependency theory,” to poverty and food riots. Trump’s theory seems to be that if we increase the price of imports, make it more difficult for American companies to export, and punish American companies for locating overseas, this ridiculous combination of counterproductive policies will result in alchemist economic gold.
Trump began by stating that the workers of America have been repaid for their hard work with “betrayal.” What, exactly, was the betrayal? Was it the corporatism Trump backs? The regulations Trump’s bought-and-paid-for politicians supported? The taxes Trump used to advocate?
No, it’s free trade.
“Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization – moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas,” Trump said, in total contravention of facts. “Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.”
Trump cited free trade as the reason for America’s steel industry collapsing, for example – “When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing…Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they loved shipped thousands of miles away.” But both Bush and Obama put restrictions on trade with regard to steel, and that didn’t stop the bleeding from the steel industry. Besides, Pittsburgh – where Trump was speaking – has moved its jobs from the steel industry to high tech. Instead of Pittsburgh looking like an open furnace, it’s a clean, growing city.
Trump thinks that’s a bad thing.
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