WHEN YOU LOOK CLOSER, “THE DONALD” BECOMES “A SIMPLETON”

This could be a caricature of “The Donald”

 

Donald Trump keeps saying that being a President of the United States is a simple job….really?

 

Now that Donald Trump has been the leader in the GOP polls for over 100 days, the political world has decided to start taking him seriously.

 

If that’s the case, which it is, it’s time to start looking seriously at some of his simplistic ideas for how he would govern if he were in the White House.

 

One thing that he would need to start understanding is that an American president is not a company CEO and America is a “nation of laws”.

 

 

In a “nation of laws”, Trump would not be able to use an executive order to circumvent the NAFTA trade agreement for dealing with Mexico and the Ford Motor Company.  According to Trump, he would require a 35% tariff on every Ford built in Mexico and brought into the US.  The North American Free Trade Agreement is the “law of the land” and he would need more than an executive order to achieve that goal.

 

Trump needs to understand that we have a serious document called the US Constitution that kinda makes all the rules, not to mention two Houses in Congress and 9 appointed guys and gals on the US Supreme court that just might get in Trump’s way.

 

In an acted-out Trump phone call to the Chief Executive of Ford Motor Company last June, Trump said, “Let me give you the bad news: Every car, every truck and every part manufactured in this Ford plant in Mexico that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35% tax ....okay?.... and that tax is going to be paid simultaneously with the transaction.”

 

For a so-called capitalist and seasoned executive, since when would the head of the US government tell private businesses what they can and can’t do with their own manufacturing, as long as it’s done legally?

 

To apply this tariff would be totally against a current signed and ratified agreement between two sovereign countries, “The Donald” needs to know that president’s don’t levy tariffs or taxes, that’s the job of the US Congress.

 

All this noise and bad PR may convince Ford to stay with their Michigan plant for now.  But if Trump would become president, I would think there wouldn’t be another Ford plant built in Michigan.

 

As one writer put it, “Never mind all that: Trump’s idea would be terrible even if feasible. For reasons familiar to all Economics 101 students, blunt-force protectionism destroys jobs, probably many more than it saves.”

 

Actually, companies like Ford have other issues to consider.

 

Ford and other US manufacturers are using their older plants to build small cars.  But with the lower gas prices, buyers are now switching to bigger models.  These auto companies can’t operate profitably when the demand for the smaller cars from these factories goes down.  If there’s are no wage cuts on the horizon, which there aren’t, Ford won’t be able to hire more people.  Eventually, Ford won’t be able to stay in Michigan and those jobs would go somewhere else anyway.

 

Trump’s a fool and was totally wrong when he told Chris Wallace on Fox, “When Ford moves their massive plant to Mexico, we get nothing. We lose all of these jobs.”  That’s a bunch of BULL!  American’s get all the benefits of a more efficient economy which saves American’s money and it allows resources to flow to their most productive use.

 

With all of Trump’s noise against American manufacturing adversaries such as China and even South Korea, which he says, “we defend . . . for practically nothing.”

 

Those in Seoul and Germany that have auto manufacturing plants all over the southern US states, what if Trump’s accusations were to cause them pull all their plants back to Germany and Seoul?  Just Kia in Georgia has jobs for 25,000 Georgians and Hyundai has 5000 jobs in three other southern states.  What about those jobs Donald?

 

As “The Donald” starts to be looked at more seriously, his simplistic approach to doing business and to being a politician are slowly, but surely showing all his warts and obvious voids.

 

Being a US real estate mogul is a whole lot different from running a nation, negotiating with other nations and dealing with the US Congress.

 

It’s about time that people get real about “The Donald”.  But what’s even more frightening is that Dr. Ben Carson is in 2^nd place.  Another individual that says some outrageous things.

 

However, seeing where the Republican nominees are today, it just makes us understand that what we are seeing today may mean nothing. 

 

This time in the 2008 elections, New Your Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in first place.  This time in the 2012 elections, Newt Gingrich was in the lead.  And let’s not forget the head of Godfather Pizza, Herman Cain, was at one time in the lead about the same amount of time before the Iowa Caucuses. 

 

But back to the issue of Trump and his contempt for free markets.

 

It will be interesting to see if he ever gets that far and how will he do in debating Hillary?

 

Stay tuned………

 

Copyright G.Ater  2015