Tag: trump administration
We Can See Trump's Economic Agenda Now -- And It Won't Work

We Can See Trump's Economic Agenda Now -- And It Won't Work

At this point, it’s clear to see that the Trump administration, along with their Congressional allies, who sit on their hands when told (tariffs) and raise them when told (the budget bill), are aggressively and successfully implementing a big, new economic agenda. As I’ll describe, it won’t work. It’s wrongheaded, ill-founded, and will hurt the people they said they want to help.

But before we get into that, I will give them this: they’ve been remarkably successful at moving policy through a clunky, incalcitrant political system, in part because they’ve legislated none of it so far (should it pass, the budget bill will be their first big piece of economic legislation; their crypto/stablecoin bill is stuck in the House, though this too is part of the plan, as I note below).

When I say “remarkably successful,” I mean the rest of us should learn from them. I’ve spent many years in gov’t, including in the Obama and Biden admins, and we self-imposed infinitely more barriers on what we wanted to do then the Trumpies (the same could be said for any admin since FDR, though he, of course, went the legislative route, one the Trumpies avoid). Basically, when a lawyer said “can’t do that,” or a political adviser said, “can’t go there because X won’t like it,” we listened.

Not these folks. They just do what Trump wants, and if the courts or some constituent group doesn’t like it, too bad. Their relentless energy to jam through their agenda, evil as it is, is a site to behold. I keep thinking, what if we did this with higher minimum wages, or abortion rights, or gun control, housing and child care, etc.?

I don’t want to overstate this case. Of course, exec orders can be and are flipped on day one by a new admin. And, as a naturally cautious, risk-averse dude, I’m sympathetic to measure thrice, cut once, vs. the Trumpies, “don’t measure! Cut!” But Ds need to learn some boldness from these folks about implementing your agenda.

Okay, with that off my chest, let’s look at their economic agenda, which is now in plain sight.

—Reduce global trade in order to reduce the trade deficit and reindustrialize U.S. industry. This one will fail for many reasons. First, they mistakenly view any trade imbalance as evidence of someone ripping us off, which is no more valid than arguing your grocery ripped you off when you willingly shopped there. Second, it’s too late to unscramble the globalization omelet: almost half of our imports are inputs into our own domestic manufacturing, which is why trade wars hurt, not help, domestic production. Third, there will be no reindustrializing. Even countries with persistent trade surpluses have their manufacturing job shares in decline.

What will happen instead is higher prices for imports, some new revenue from the tariffs, some protected industries, like steel, doing better than they would have otherwise, though at the expense of other industries that buy tariff-induced, now-more-expensive outputs. Growth will, on net, be a bit slower for a time (assuming they eventually set the tariff rate and stick with it, a strong assumption), and inflation and interest rates higher for a time as well.

—Deport undocumented immigrants for the crime of being undocumented. I’ve had the misfortune of hearing Stephen Miller talk about the economics of this plan, which suggests he stuck with econ 101 for a few weeks and bailed too soon. His idea is that if we reduce the supply of labor by kicking out undocumented workers, employers will have to pay more to domestic workers.

This won’t work either. That is, as the figure shows (from Axios this AM), it will work in reducing net immigration, and, as I’ll discuss below, border control is a highly legit goal (of course, this goes way beyond that). But it will hurt the economy. For one, reducing labor supply is a negative for growth, one which will especially pinch in sectors like construction, health care, restaurants, meatpacking, hospitality services. For another, and this is a flaw in Miller and many others’ understanding of these dynamics, immigrants don’t just bring supply. They also bring demand.

With the push against immigration, "the economy will find itself slightly diminished in the long run and inflation will run a touch higher," economist Bernard Yaros writes in a report for Oxford Economics…

“The arrests cast a shadow over the local economy. Restaurant tables emptied. Kitchen workers stayed home. Fruit vendors disappeared from the streets. The number of shoppers at stores shrank, and those who still went didn't linger for long…"

"That means crops are not being picked and fruit and vegetables are rotting at peak harvest time," farmers and farmworkers told Reuters.

—Gut the safety net to very partially offset large tax cuts for the wealthy. This one is quite different from the first two because it explicitly and demonstrably hurts working class people (the above two do so as well, but as second-order effects; this one is first order). Here we have Trump in traditional R mode, passing a deficit-financed budget with which Reagan and the Bushes would be very familiar. But even they would be, like, “Wait up, Donnie. We always gave a few crumbs to the bottom end so we could say we we were helping everyone. We gave a little to the poor and a lot to the rich; we didn’t take from the bottom to give to the top.”

Like everything else here, it won’t work in terms of helping working class people because trickle-down never works. It will “work” in terms of enriching their traditional donor class. It it is also likely to eventually raise interest rates, potentially making debt service a much heavier lift than we’ve seen before (as we argue in a new paper, out soon).

—Block the production of renewable energy. This couldn’t be clearer in the big, stupid bill, and it’s so ridiculous that even traditional Rs like the Chamber of Commerce and energy companies that recognize renewable energy production is part of their and our futures don’t get it. It seems to be driven wholly by Trump’s nostalgia for coal and distaste for wind turbines blocking his view.

It won’t work in the sense that it will cost jobs, make energy more expensive, and slow us down in the global AI race.

There are other cats and dogs I won’t go into. A big one is compromising Federal Reserve independence. Kings don’t like independent Fed chairs, but this one will also backfire bigtime. History is clear that loss of central-bank independence is inflationary. (Jason Furman and I had a good talk yesterday about this and much of the rest of the above, here.) They’re also trying to normalize crypto and integrate it into the larger financial system. To say “that won’t work” is an understatement. Depending how far this highly volatile asset with zero use cases integrates into the system, it’s a future financial crisis in the making.

Also, as noted, controlling the border is, by definition, integral to having a country. And unfair trading partners exist. IOW, there are germs of truth in those parts of the agenda, but, and this is an aspect of their approach we should decidedly not emulate, they always go to the sledgehammer when the scalpel is what’s needed.

To say, as I do here, that an agenda that is in place won’t work is to make a empirical bet. I’m predicting worse growth, price, job, and interest rate outcomes than would otherwise occur. And this being economics, with millions of other variables endlessly zipping around, I could be wrong. If so—and it will take some time to know—I’ll be the first to say so. But I think and fear that I’m right.

Jared Bernstein is a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden. He is a senior fellow at the Council on Budget and Policy Priorities. Please consider subscribing to his column for free at Jared's Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Substack.

Zohran Mamdani

New York Republicans Beg Trump To Deport Zohran Mamdani

New York’s Young Republican Club has urged President Donald Trump's administration to revoke Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s U.S. citizenship and deport him under the Communist Control Act after his win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday night.

The New York Republican club wrote a post on the social platform X Wednesday, urging President Donald Trump’s aides to take action.

“The radical Zohran Mamdani cannot be allowed to destroy our beloved city of New York," the post read. It added: "The Communist Control Act lets President Trump revoke @ZohranKMamdani’s citizenship and promptly deport him."

"The time for action is now — @StephenM and @RealTomHoman, New York is counting on you," the tweet read, tagging the official handles of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and immigration advisor Tom Homan.

Mamdani, a 33‑year‑old democratic socialist and New York state legislator, defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary Tuesday. The race drew national attention thanks to his progressive platform centered on rent freezes, free public transit, universal childcare and city-run grocery stores.

Born in Uganda and naturalized as an American citizen in 2018, Mamdani represents a generational and ideological shift in New York politics, energizing younger voters and gaining endorsements from leading progressive figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.).

The nature of the New York Republicans' deportation demand — which would hinge on the 1954 Communist Control Act — means it has virtually no legal basis, given Mamdani’s clearly documented U.S. citizenship. The Communist Control Act of 1954 is a U.S. federal law that formally outlawed the Communist Party and criminalized membership in or support for communist organizations.

This is not the first time Mamdani has faced such an attack from Republicans.

Earlier this month, Republican City Council member Vickie Paladino also called for his deportation in a post on X.

Mamdani responded forcefully, condemning the demand as part of a broader wave of “Donald Trump’s authoritarian administration” rhetoric that has included death threats and Islamophobic attacks.

“This is what Trump and his sycophants have wrought," Mamdani said in a statement to reporters at the time.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump's Fox News Obsession Driving US Toward War With Iran

Trump's Fox News Obsession Driving US Toward War With Iran

President Donald Trump appears to be careening toward a U.S. military strike on Iran as current and former Fox News figures — from posts on the network’s airwaves, elsewhere in the right-wing media ecosystem, and within his administration — fight to influence his decision.

For years, Trump's obsession with the Fox universe has driven policy decisions, administration staffing, and countless stream-of-consciousness social media posts. Now, the network will have an outsized role in determining America's potential involvement in a spiraling regional military conflict.

The George W. Bush administration spent months “following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein” before finally launching that war in March 2003. That strategy — based on cooked intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction dishonestly sold to American people — resulted in the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. service members and more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians as well as a massive financial cost.

Two decades later, Trump seems poised to join Israel's attack on Iran, with the stated goal of preventing that country from acquiring nuclear weapons that the U.S. intelligence community says it is not seeking. The president on Tuesday threatened to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, bragged that the U.S. is involved in securing the airspace over that country, and called for “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” all while the U.S. military is marshalling forces in the region. And that push has come with little effort to convince the public, which overwhelmingly opposes U.S. military involvement in Iran, of the necessity of such a course.

The Fox propaganda engine is driving this chaotic process. Trump reportedly became more interested in U.S. military action because he saw favorable Fox coverage of Israel’s initial attacks on Iran, while more recent segments have stressed the importance of U.S. involvement. Fox host Mark Levin and his former colleague Tucker Carlson are waging a scorched-earth battle for Trump’s ear, with Levin apparently gaining the advantage. And top administration officials with roles in a potential conflict — including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — are in their positions in the first place because Trump approved of their previous work at the network.

It remains unclear what the president will decide to do and how any of it will play out for the country and the world. What seems likely, however, is that the Trump administration will undertake its Iran policy with the same inconsistency that characterized his tariff policy; the same low quality of staff work that got a reporter added to a text chain where top officials shared info about a forthcoming U.S. strike; the same lack of care for the lives of foreigners that has already killed hundreds of thousands of people; and the same disinterest in following the law on display in his deportation plan.

And Trump’s action, regardless of what it is, will receive sycophantic cheers from his propagandists at Fox.

The Fox-Trump feedback loop is powering Iran policy

A June 17 New York Times story detailing how Trump had shifted from trying to restrain an Israeli attack on Iran while overseeing negotiations with its leaders to supporting Israel’s strike and considering U.S. involvement highlights the role of a key player: Fox.

“When he woke on Friday morning, his favorite TV channel, Fox News, was broadcasting wall-to-wall imagery of what it was portraying as Israel’s military genius,” the Times reported. “And Mr. Trump could not resist claiming some credit for himself.”

Under typical circumstances, a U.S. president shifting the nation’s military posture based on a few cable news segments would sound fantastical. But under Trump, major aspects of federal policy regularly turn on what he is hearing from his favored TV personalities. Fox hosts understand their influence and regularly seek to influence Trump’s decisions, both through their programs and in private conversations with the president.

Fox’s hosts thus wield incredible power over Trump’s actions. And in recent days, those figures have been using their platforms to tell the president that U.S. strikes on Iran are both important and likely to succeed with little cost. They know which buttons to push and are banging on them as hard as they can.

“Trump's favorite TV network has staked out the pro-war position – and it isn't making as much room for debate,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported on June 18. “Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump's ego — simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen.”

Carlson and Levin go to war

Carlson and Levin are waging a scorched-earth campaign against each other, with each presenting their own views as the true America First position as they seek to influence Trump’s decision-making.

Carlson, a proponent of the right’s white nationalist and Holocaust-denying wing who tends to oppose foreign military interventions in favor of attacks on domestic enemies, claims that bombing Iran would “shut down Trump’s three core promises.” Levin, a staunch advocate for deploying U.S. power in the Middle East, argues that American intervention would be consistent with Trump’s policy of “peace through strength.”

Levin currently appears to have the upper hand. Politico reported last week that Levin made his case to Trump directly at a June 4 meeting:

During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the president is not accurate, according to an intelligence official as well as another Trump ally familiar with the matter. Levin urged Trump to allow the Israeli government to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would torpedo the diplomacy.

Carlson subsequently lashed out at Levin and other Fox figures whom he (accurately) described as “warmongers.” He wrote on June 13:

The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran. On that list: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson. At some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.

Levin replied, calling Carlson “a reckless and deceitful propagandist” who “promote[s] antisemitism and conspiracy nuts” (all obviously true). He added: “It doesn’t occur to you that your supposed sources are disloyal to POTUS. You and they are undermining him and you just declared your break from the President.” In a series of subsequent posts, he denigrated his former colleague as “Chatsworth Qatarlson” and accused him of “rooting for Iran” and “trashing our president.”

Carlson responded in a June 16 appearance on his ally Stephen Bannon’s program in which he claimed that Levin is “terrible on TV” (true) with a screen presence reminiscent of “listening to your ex-wife scream about alimony payments” (sexist but at least directionally correct). He further claimed that Levin’s appearances on Fox demonstrate that what the network is “doing is what they always do, which is just turning up the propaganda hose to full blast and just trying to, you know, knock elderly Fox viewers off their feet and make them submit to where you want them to” (extremely accurate).

Trump, for his part, weighed in on Sunday, June 15, saying of Carlson’s critique of his Iran policy, “I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” In a Monday night post, he described Carlson as “kooky” (another accurate characterization), adding, “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Levin swiftly highlighted both comments on social media.

Levin took a curtain call on Hannity’s Fox show on Tuesday night, screaming, “You’re either a patriotic American who’s gonna get behind the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief, or you’re not!”

Many key administration roles are filled by former Foxers

Several senior administration officials who will play key roles in advising Trump on whether and how to conduct military strikes and then implement that policy are wildly unqualified people who got their jobs because the president liked their Fox appearances. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are among the 23 former Fox employees Trump has appointed to his second administration.

Gabbard, a former Fox contributor from the Carlson wing of the MAGA movement who lacks “the typical intelligence experience of past officeholders,” said in congressional testimony earlier this year that it was the conclusion of the intelligence community that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

Trump, however, apparently preferred Levin’s lunchtime claim that Iran was actually days away from a bomb, telling reporters on June 17, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having a weapon.” The president, Politico reported Tuesday, “has increasingly mused about nixing Gabbard’s office completely” and, according to one source, “thinks she ‘doesn’t add anything to any conversation.’”

Trump promoted Hegseth from Fox & Friends Weekend co-host to the leadership of the Pentagon, and based on his past Fox commentary, he is likely a voice in favor of military action. His early leadership of the Defense Department is not encouraging for how such action might go — he has driven off his senior staff, discussed U.S. strikes in private texts that subsequently leaked, and oversaw a costly and ultimately ineffective campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Other relevant former Foxers include Mike Huckabee, the former network host Trump installed as U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Tammy Bruce, the former Fox contributor currently ensconced as the State Department spokesperson.

No matter what happens, this much is certain: A bunch of current and former Fox News employees are essentially deciding whether the U.S. is going to war.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Echoes Of Iraq Invasion As Trump Lurches Toward War On Iran

Echoes Of Iraq Invasion As Trump Lurches Toward War On Iran

President Donald Trump is publicly toying with the possibility of joining Israel's war on Iran, ignoring his own administration’s intelligence assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”—giving nightmarish flashbacks to President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq.

“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble,” Trump said on the White House lawn Wednesday morning.

According to The New York Times, Trump is inching closer to U.S. involvement in Iran, even though national intelligence disputes Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was weeks away from achieving nuclear capabilities. It’s the same claim Netanyahu has been falsely asserting for three decades, making him sound like the boy who cried wolf.

Meanwhile, Trump is feuding with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified before Congress in March that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon and is now seemingly trying to deter Trump from going to war.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday. “I think they were very close to having a weapon.”

And like Bush, who was goaded into invading Iraq by fellow bloodthirsty Republicans—like Vice President Dick Cheney, who falsely claimed that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction”—Trump is being provoked by GOP hawks advocating for bombing Iran.

"He's very focused, very calm," warmonger Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told CNN. "I feel like when he says no nukes for Iran, he means it. He gave them a chance for diplomacy. I think they made a miscalculation when it comes to President Trump."

And Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, told Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” that Iran is "very close to having enough pure weapons-grade uranium for several weapons."

He also said that Trump has "appropriately kept all options on the table."

This is terrifying because Trump has a history of believing the last person he speaks to on an issue. And given that the Iran hawks now have his ear, it looks like Trump may be swayed by their bloodlust and enter the United States into another aimless war.

"He’s easily manipulable, but this is on him. That is where we are now. He has engaged the U.S. in a new war in the Middle East, and he seems to be on the brink of going just all in," Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, told the New Republic.

What’s more, Republicans and right-wing media are also painting people against U.S. involvement in the war as un-American—trying to pressure Trump’s base, which is uneasy about it, to fall in line. It echoes right-wing media tactics used to sell the public on the war in Iraq in 2002.

"This is good versus evil. You’re either a patriotic American who is going to get behind the president of the United States—the commander-in-chief—or you’re not," Fox News personality Mark Levin said Tuesday night.

Sound familiar?

As the saying goes: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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