If You Loved Trump’s Dismal Time In Office, A Second Term Will be heaven
During his disastrous, interminable four years in office, trump’s ill-conceived trade war with China caused U.S. consumer prices to soar and he wants to do it all over again, if he is brought back to the White House next November.
Trump’s draconian immigration policies led to the greatest flood of immigrants in U.S. history and trump wants to reinstate even coarser policies if he is elected.
Completing the trifecta of bad policies, trump would quit NATO, end funding to support Ukraine in battling Russia and continue total support for Benjamin Netanyahu, forever ending the possibility of a Palestinian state and the open-ended violence between Israel and the Palestinians.
When trump was running for reelection in 2020 he predicted the economy would crash like a brick lavatory if he was not returned to the White House. Now he is repeating the same unhinged threats while he was particularly dismayed with the stock market’s recent, record highs. Trump had an answer; he said that polls that show him ahead of President Biden are driving the optimistic outlook on Wall Street.
“I think the economy is horrible, except the stock market is going up, and I think the stock market is going up because I’m leading Biden in all of the polls,” Trump said during a town hall event in Iowa on Jan. 10. “I think there will be a crash if I don’t win.”
During his presidency, the lynchpin to trump’s economic policy would be the imposition of new, gargantuan tariffs against China. The tariffs didn’t stop the exit of U.S. industries to China while they have damaged American consumers much more than any pain inflicted on China.
Another trade war with China would cause repercussions that could cripple the U.S. economy, potentially also dragging the rest of the world down while Americans would face a skyrocketing increase in the costs of many goods.
Trump said that if he is elected, he is considering revisiting his economic attack on China. He wants to downgrade China’s trade status with the United States, which would lead to more than 40 percent increase in federal tariffs on Chinese imports. In total, trump suggested imposing a 10 percent tariff on nearly $3 trillion in annual imports from all countries, including China.
“The 2018 to 2019 trade war was immensely damaging, and this would go so far beyond that it’s hard to even compare to that,” said Erica York, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank that opposes the tariffs. “This threatens to upend and fragment global trade to an extent we haven’t seen in centuries.”
Trump has claimed that tariffs imposed in his first term brought in billions of dollars to the U.S. However, his policies added roughly $8 trillion to the national debt through higher spending and tax cuts while he approved roughly $30 billion in a bailout to compensate farmers who had been hurt by retaliatory tariffs imposed by China.
In a report commissioned by the U.S.-China Business Council, Oxford Economics found in November that ending permanent normal trade relations with China would cost the U.S. economy $1.6 trillion and lead to more than 700,000 lost jobs.
Trump started the trade war in 2018, hoping to stop China from unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. In response, China accused trump of engaging in nationalist protectionism and retaliated. In January 2020, the U.S. and China reached an agreement, that included a Chinese commitment to buy an additional $200 billion in American goods above 2017 levels by the end of 2021. The agreement expired in December 2021 with China failing to reach its targets for U.S. imports to China.
“The ultimate results of the phase one trade deal between China and the United States — and the trade war that preceded it — have significantly hurt the American economy without solving the underlying economic concerns that the trade war was meant to resolve,” wrote Ryan Hass and Abraham Denmark for the non-profit, non-partisan Brookings Institution think tank.
Hass and Denmark said that in return for Chinese agreement on the tariffs, trump promised to cut way back on criticisms of Chinese domestic policies. Trump’s move resulted in “a more permissive environment for China to advance its interests abroad and oppress its own people at home, secure in the knowledge that American responses would be muted by a president who was reluctant to risk losing the deal,” according to the Brookings report.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, trump claimed that he would force China to reduce its $346 billion trade deficit with the U.S. to stem the exodus of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China. Three months after his inauguration, trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Mar-a-Lago and the two leaders agreed on a 100-day action plan to resolve the trade matters. The next month, China agreed to open its economy only slightly to U.S. firms.
“Yet follow-on negotiations fizzled as Washington pushed Beijing for more concessions and Beijing rebuffed American pressure,” according to the Brookings Institution report. “The 100 days concluded in July 2017 with no agreement, no press conference, and no joint statement out of the first meeting of the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue (which was declared dead by the Trump administration four months later).”
Heather Long wrote in the Washington Post that trump’s economic war caused pain on both sides and led to diversion of trade away from both China and the U.S.
“U.S. economic growth slowed, business investment froze, and companies didn’t hire as many people. Across the nation, a lot of farmers went bankrupt, and the manufacturing and freight transportation sectors have hit lows not seen since the last recession. Trump’s actions amounted to one of the largest tax increases in years,” Long wrote.
In 2019, Moody’s Analytics termed trump’s machinations “Trade War Chicken.” Moody’s found that the trade war cost the U.S. economy nearly 300,000 jobs and an estimated 0.3 percent of real GDP. A 2019 report from Bloomberg Economics estimated that the trade war would cost the U.S. economy $316 billion by the end of 2020, while the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Columbia University concluded that U.S. companies lost at least $1.7 trillion in the price of their stocks as a result of U.S. tariffs imposed on imports from China.
A June 2019 story by Reuters quoted trump as saying that China would pay the tariffs he imposed on $250 billion of Chinese exports to the U.S. That theory was disputed by the Annual Review of Economics, a peer reviewed journal, which reported in April 2022 on the effects of the tariffs on U.S. consumers.
“The main takeaways from this research are that US consumers of imported goods have borne the brunt of the tariffs through higher prices, and that the trade war has lowered aggregate real income in both the United States and China, although not by large magnitudes relative to GDP,” the review said.
Reuters reported that tariffs are essentially a tax on imports and are paid by firms that are based in China and registered in the U.S.
“Importers often pass the costs of tariffs on to customers — manufacturers and consumers in the United States — by raising their prices,” the Reuters story said. “A growing number of U.S. companies has warned about the negative impact of the tariffs on U.S. consumers.”
Those warnings came from Nike Inc. and 172 other footwear companies. Walmart Inc. and department store chain Macy’s Inc. also warned that prices for shoppers will rise due to higher tariffs on goods from China. Higher duties on imports of metals and Chinese products increased Caterpillar’s production costs by more than $100 million and the heavy-duty equipment maker was forced to increase prices for its products.
Tractor manufacturer Deere & Co estimated a $100 million increase in its raw materials costs because of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. Deere subsequently cut costs and increased prices to protect its profits.
Trump’s agreement to back away from criticizing China’s domestic policies helped China to quell pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and to maintain control over a million native Uyghur Muslims living in China.
CNN reported on Oct. 4, 2019, that trump had spoken privately with Xi Jinping and promised that the U.S. would remain quiet on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong while trade talks continued.
“The remarkable pledge to the Chinese leader is a dramatic departure from decades of U.S. support for human rights in China and shows just how eager Trump is to strike a deal with Beijing as the trade war weighs on the U.S. economy,” CNN reported.
“I know President Xi of China very well. He is a great leader who very much has the respect of his people. He is also a good man in a ‘tough business.’ I have ZERO doubt that if President Xi wants to quickly and humanely solve the Hong Kong problem, he can do it. Personal meeting?” said trump.
John Bolton, then national security adviser for trump, claimed that, in order to consummate the trade deal, trump made further conciliatory comments to Xi at the June 2019 G-20 summit in Japan.
“According to Bolton, Trump told Xi to go ahead with building camps to detain 1 million or more Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, saying it was exactly the right thing to do, and asked Xi Jinping to help him win the upcoming presidential election by increasing purchases of soybeans and wheat,” CNN reported.
Trump’s immigration policies were as flawed as his ballyhooed, trade war with China. Now he is exploiting those fears in his campaign for another four years as president.
As president, trump invoked executive actions to limit legal immigration and restricted asylum and refugee programs, creating a massive backlog of asylum claims. But most of his immigration promises were either spurned by the courts or rejected by Congress. His beloved border wall was never built, he did not triple the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officers and cuts in funding to sanctuary cities were never upheld, despite trump’s promises.
Trump failed in working with Congress and during his rule, Congress did not pass one bill to revamp the U.S. immigration system.
Trump promised to cut Justice Department funds to so-called sanctuary cities, where local officials defied new and oppressive immigration laws. The courts ruled against trump and said that an executive order and conditions for the Justice Department grant violated the separation of powers doctrine.
Trump did not win Congressional approval to hire 10,000 new ICE agents. In fact, his administration faced difficulties in recruiting and hiring new agents.
As it was clear from the start, Mexico did not pay for trump’s border wall, despite his far-out promises. Federal funds were used to replace a total of around 200 miles of dilapidated barriers with new fences. Before he took office, there were 654 miles of primary barriers along the nearly 2,000-mile southwest border. By the end of his term, the number was increased by three miles.
A key to trump’s brutish attempt to deter illegal immigration was the “zero tolerance” policy, which required prosecution of immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally. The draconian plan led to the separation from the parents of thousands of children as young as 5 months old. In 2018, a federal judge ordered an end to the family separation policy because the administration had no reunification plan or an effective system to track children removed from the parents.
Trump limited overall immigration by restricting the number of people who could request asylum at the southwest border. The policy flew in the face of federal law which grants asylum to immigrants who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. They can request asylum even if they arrived without legal permission.
The trump administration denied asylum to people who did not ask for asylum in another country first. Trump launched the “Remain in Mexico” program, sending asylum seekers to Mexico to wait for a resolution of their case, instead of letting them into the United States. Mexico has challenged the program in court. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration expelled immigrants who arrived at the border, invoking federal law that allows the U.S. to deny entry of immigrants from countries facing outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Trump’s policies had a drastic impact on the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. Before leaving office, President Barack Obama said the U.S. should allow in as many as 110,000 refugees in fiscal year 2017. Trump capped the level at 50,000 and reduced it further to 18,000 by 2020.
Most of the people deported by ICE were not criminals but were trying to get into the U.S. and had not been in the country illegally for a long time. ICE recorded about 749,500 removals in total from fiscal years 2017 to 2019, falling short of trump’s promise to deport all immigrants illegally in the country. An estimated 10 million people are in the U.S. illegally, including about 650,000 immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and are protected from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA program. The program remains in force, despite trump’s promise to end DACA.
Last month 249,785 illegal crossings were recorded along the U.S.-Mexico border, the highest monthly total ever. Biden said he would “shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed” if Congress passes a bipartisan immigration plan that the Senate has been negotiating. But the plan is likely dead after trump demanded that members of congress kill what he called a “meaningless” bill. The bill also has repercussions for Ukraine and Israel as it also contains billions of dollars in aid for the two nations.
Trump doesn’t want Biden to get any political credit in the immigration war, even if it means kicking the problem further down the road. The former president wants credit for any immigration reforms and has said that on the first day of his presidency he would launch a massive deportation operation.
Democrats weren’t the only ones to tear into trump for his order to reject any immigration bill.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said that trump as president didn’t do enough to protect the border and that the immigration crisis would be different if trump had worked with conservatives to get bills passed in 2018 and 2019. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., called Trump’s and his lawmaker allies’ tactics to block the bill “ immoral,” while Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, termed them “appalling.”
The proposed Senate bill expands the government’s deportation powers and the ability to expel border-crossers and deny them access to the asylum system when daily crossings surpass 5,000. Trump has demonized immigrants as poisoning the nation and has made unsubstantiated claims that other countries are emptying their “prisons” and “mental institutions” and sending them to the U.S. He also claimed without evidence that the flood of immigrants means there is a “100 percent chance” that there would be a “major terrorist attack” in the U.S. He also lied when he claimed that 2 million immigrants enter the U.S. nation each year.
The GOP keeps falsely claiming that the southern border is wide open and effectively lawless despite the number of Border Patrol agents deployed there quadrupling since 1992.
To reduce the congestion, Biden wants to cut the average time for an asylum claim to be resolved from several years to six months and to raise the standard for migrants to be able to make an asylum claim.
Biden’s initiatives have been blocked in Congress by Republicans who refuse to approve a current supplemental request, pending since October, that seeks $14 billion to add more border agents, immigration judges and deportation officers.
Regarding trump foreign policy, he has said he will make “America First,” a label made popular by Nazi sympathizers and isolationists before the U.S. entered World War II.
A new trump administration would see the U.S. again retreat from its traditional world leadership role, whether it is to safeguard shipping from attacks or to maintain troops in Poland and South Korea to deter aggression.
Judging from his first term in office, a second trump administration would see the U.S. fall behind efforts to address climate change, public health and human rights.
As president, trump pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, giving China an opening to fill the vacuum and improve relations with 14 Asian nations in the region.
He withdrew the U.S. from the landmark, Paris climate agreement, leaving the U.S. as the sole country to withdraw from the agreement after entering into it. The agreement involved voluntary pledges to reduce carbon emissions. Trump’s withdrawal killed any chance of reaching President Obama’s goal of cutting U.S. emissions by 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel and relocated the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, inflaming many U.S. allies for not linking the move to broader plans to provide security to the Gaza strip and the rest of Palestine.
He pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, ending any chance of nuclear accountability by Iran. The decision again went against the majority of nations that had signed the accord.
Trump bragged that he would create “a great relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump failed to condemn Putin despite Russia’s information warfare inside America, hacking of U.S. state electoral systems, massive disinformation campaign, and international atrocities such as bombing hospitals in Syria. Trump’s conciliatory relationship with Russia may have led Putin to believe the U.S. would stand aside during an invasion of Ukraine.
Trump failed to reach reproachment with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un and to have the Korean peninsula denuclearized. Trump taunted Kim Jong Un and met with him in a summit that was unsuccessful for the U.S.
“Convinced that his personal charm and deal-making skills could convince Kim to give up the nuclear deterrent on which the survival of his regime depends, Trump ended up getting nothing,” according to a January 2021 analysis by Foreignpolicy.com.
The Foreignpolicy.com analysis gave trump “dismal” overall grades.
“Although Trump can claim a few foreign-policy successes, his overall record is dismal. America’s adversaries are more dangerous than they were in 2016, the United States is weaker, sicker, and more divided, relations with many U.S. allies are worse, and any aspirations to moral leadership that Americans might have harbored have been badly tarnished,” the story reported.