MULTIPLE ORGANIZATIONS HAVE DECLARED TRUMP’S PROPOSALS UNWORKABLE

….This group usually is a big supporter of GOP candidates

 

Trump relied on a major liberal think-tank for much of his speech data

 

Isn’t interesting that three large national operations that are many times behind the Republican presidential candidate, such as the US Chamber of Commerce, they now state that, "Under Trump's trade plans, we would see higher prices, fewer jobs, and a weaker economy”.  Another Chamber Tweet read said that Trump's proposed import tariffs "would strip us of at least 3.5 million jobs."

 

The Chamber later shared an article headlined "Point and Counterpoint on Trade: Responding to Trump, Sanders, & Clinton".   The article concluded that "there’s a gulf between what the three candidates are saying about trade and the actual facts."

 

The second organization that Trump's speech also drew the same negative blowback from was  the National Association of Manufacturers.  This group usually supports the GOP candidates, but not this time.

 

The third organization that Trump has disagreed with Mr. Trump, was a group that he has relied on for his few organized speeches which is the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) that Trump’s speeches have quoted in a number of his addresses.

In his speech against globalization and its negative effects on American workers, Donald Trump has strangely relied on the research and analysis from the highly liberal, EPI over a dozen times. The prepared Trump text has quoted the EPI’s work in footnotes multiple times for backing up many of Trump’s claims.  Especially about how US trade policies have destroyed American jobs, flattened wages, and pulverized the American middle class.

 

This was important because some liberal observers said it showed that Trump is trying to stake out positions on trade and wages that are far to the left, not just of the GOP, but perhaps even to the left of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and the Democrats.

 

So, it’s highly note worthy that the EPI now says that Trump’s account of what has happened to American workers in recent decades is false and simplistic in the extreme.  Also that Trump is actually in support of a lot of the GOP’s economics and that Trump’s actual trade prescriptions fall laughably short of what needs to be done to help American workers.

 

Trump boasted in his speech that “under a Trump presidency, the American worker will finally have a president who will protect them and fight for them”.  He also repeatedly accused Clinton and other politicians supported by financial elites of “betraying” American workers by prioritizing globalization over their interests.

 

But Lawrence Mishel, the president of EPI, has made multiple critiques of the Trump speech.  Mishel’s statements noted that Trump suggests that only government officials, particularly the Clinton administration and Democrats, who supported trade deals such as NAFTA, are to blame for flat wages. He argued that Trump has left out the role of Republicans in causing this problem.  He doesn’t reference the fact that the business community’s has also used its power to keep wages down and erode the power of labor unions.

 

Trump’s speeches make it seem as if globalization alone suppressed wages and that this was all done by elite Democrats.  Missing from his tale of American woe is the role of the corporate community in pushing this agenda and his own GOP organization in making it happen. It must be understood that NAFTA never would have passed without a lot of GOP votes, because two-thirds of the House Democrats had opposed NAFTA!

 

What’s missing from all this is the way that the business community has used its power to suppress wages over the last four decades.

 

First, one must start with the excessive unemployment in the US due partly to the Federal Reserve Board policies that were not supportive of wage growth, but were friendly to the finance industry and to bondholders.

 

Then there’s the many Republican Governors and legislatures economic austerity at the state levels that has impeded the economic recovery.  And don’t forget the removal of collective bargaining, which is the largest reason that the American middle class wages have faltered.

 

The erosion of the minimum wage is now more than 25% below its 1968 level, even though US productivity has more than doubled.

 

If a $15 minimum wage were phased in, it would lift wages for at least a third of the workforce.

 

But Donald Trump is AWOL on this issue or just flat wrong on all of these issues.

 

The most current example is the GOP’s and business community’s effort to overturn the recent raising of the overtime threshold, a change that would help more than 12 million salaried workers.

 

But where is Trump on that?

 

If you call Trump’s bluff on wages, he will claim he generally wants higher wages, but what government actions is he prepared to support to make that happen?  Remember, during the primary debates Trump said US wages were too high to be competitive, a clam he has since backed away from more than once.  And remember that Trump has voiced support for the elimination of the federal minimum wage.

 

Meanwhile, Trump has offered no proposals to enhance the bargaining power of unions, which Hillary Clinton has done.

 

But EPI’s Mishel noted that by taking steps to boost unions and the minimum wage, that would be hugely important tools in helping workers.  Mishel also agrees that Trump is taking positions that are very much in line with the same elites that he says he’s at war with….?

 

The US Chamber of Commerce went ahead and attacked Trump’s protectionism.  Mishel notes that Trump is in fact comfortable with that “protection ideology” and that Trump’s tax plan would offer a giant windfall to the top corporate earners while also slashing corporate income tax rates. This is why the elite GOP donors privately don’t mind Trump that much, despite all the attention on the outward Trump theatrics and his supposed anti-elitism.

 

In fact, Mishel has also mentions something important that many people have ignored.

 

In his speech, Trump also said: “We tax and regulate and restrict our companies to death, then we allow foreign countries that cheat to export their goods to us tax-free.”

 

Mishel responded: “Trump then argues, without basis, that businesses are overregulated and overtaxed, further ingratiating himself to the corporate elites.”

 

He continued, “The reality is that deregulation and tax cuts are the tried and failed policies of the last four decades and they have simply enriched the rich.”

 

The EPI has laid out its arguments about what really needs to be done for American workers.

 

It is not surprising that a liberal economic think tank like EPI is now criticizing Trump, especially since he is the GOP presidential nominee.

 

It shows that Trump is not actually to the left of Republican and conservative economic orthodoxy in many key respects, let alone to the left of Clinton and the Democrats.  That’s particularly on the big questions about what has happened to the American worker in recent decades and what government should now help to fix it.

 

People shouldn’t be fooled by his bunch of tough-talking Trump trade-bluster for believing otherwise.

 

Trump is full of Bull, and little by little Americans are going to see that…..at least, boy, I sure hope so.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016