Here's a quick summary of Donald Trump's economic policy, as it's been announced on a random basis over the past few months. There's something for everybody:
No tax on tips! No tax on Social Security! No tax on overtime! Restore the SALT deduction! Extend the tax cuts for the rich! Cap credit card interest rates! 20% tariffs on everything! Cut the estate tax! Tax woke universities! Deduct newborn expenses! Block all food imports! Maybe a child tax credit! Cut the corporate tax rate! Tax breaks for oil and coal producers! Reduce taxes on manufacturing!
And here's everything else, equally random:
Deport 20 million immigrants! Freedom cities! New nonwoke universities! Fire the bureaucrats! Let Putin win the Ukraine war! Bring back incandescent light bulbs! Kill new air pollution limits! Government funded IVF! Cut off funding to schools that require vaccines! Eliminate the Department of Education! Let teachers carry concealed weapons! Build tent cities for the homeless! Send in the National Guard to Chicago! Shoot shoplifters! The death penalty for drug smugglers! Make Taiwan pay for US protection! More school vouchers! Build the wall! Work requirements for welfare bums! Higher military spending! Keep TikTok! Death to Facebook! No more climate change funding! Build an Iron Dome for America! Slash corporate regulation!
Exciting times, no?
Pretty much as I expected, the future "policy" of the Republican party seems to be: erect very high tariffs to protect the American market from those evil foreigners, while inside the US borders, let trickle-down economics rule the day.
You have to admit this "policy" is very well designed to produce campaign money (from the big US companies protected by tariffs, and from the rich people who want the estate tax gone). Gonna be fairly hard to fight this "policy" with common sense, I think.
It's the economic policy of the dark ages. Conservatives haven't had a serious economic policy since theft became illegal, and they've been trying to do something about that ever since.
The first three will never become a reality if Republicans have a say. He knows this, but the say anything part of his campaign is on steroids at the moment.
And yet...it let's him dominate the "free" news coverage.
Harris gives interviews, goes to rallies, talks in coherent sentences and gives reality based answers...where's the fun in that???
Once again, the media are a bitter disappointment. All they care about is clicks, so 100% of the online coverage in the mainstream media is about the horse race and the latest outrage.
All policies will require an exclamation point!
Promises of bread and circuses worked pretty well for the Romans for quite some time.
What are Trump's many promises but an update to this century?
Without the bread.
Most working class have no idea just how bad his policies would be for them. Right now the Republicans and their conservative allies are hard at work trying to weaken or outright dismantle the NLRB. The agency responsible for holding businesses accountable for labor law abuses.
And apparently, a majority of the Teamsters membership was ready to endorse the REPUBLICAN validate for president, a party which would immediately end all unions* without a second thought if they could get away with it.
People. Have. No. Idea.
*Police, fire department unions excepted, obviously.
I'm a teamster and I am embarrassed so many of my Teamster brothers support a man that is so obviously anto union. The rank and file are mad the Union didnt endorse Trump. probably necause the reason they gave was kinda stupid. Thankfully we aren't as all enamored with a con man. There's a local in California, of course it had to be California, that has endorsed Harris. For that I'm grateful and proud.
It is better to look at what Trump did while he was president than to listen to today's campaign promises. Trump spent 4 years enriching himself and his family and playing the mob don, dispensing favors in return for loyalty and ego stroking.
Not really.
He wasn't prepared last time, and didn't have the Republican party and the rest of the right-wing under his thumb, and therefore was limited in what he could do.
This time he is prepared (e.g. has the lists of people to put in the administration that project 2025 made), and the right-wing will do what he wants. So now he can do what he wants, which is to be a "strong" dictator, i.e. suppress the population like his pals (Putin/Xi/Kim).
Trump can do all that and I won't be satisfied because THE issue this election year is flow restrictors on shower heads. Trump brought it up earlier but now he's kicked the 5 gal/min crowd to the curb. That'll cost him the election.
I laughed, but here is Gloria Romero, former Democratic State Senate leader, on why she is switching parties: https://x.com/JohnEkdahl/status/1832086803026985373?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1832086803026985373%7Ctwgr%5Ebe1d222dea835a58383a57a992a321057c97e1cf%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Foregoneagle.com%2Fcan-not-toast-a-tortilla-on-an-electric-range-latina-politician-ditches-democratic-party-over-gas-stove-crackdown%2F
Policy shmolicy.
This election is pro wrestling vs. responsible adults. Burn it down vs. build it up. Feral screams vs. self-control. Democracy vs. dictatorship.
KD runs this quote in the masthead, perfect for the times:
I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics. In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
Richard Hofstadter - 1964, The Paranoid Style in American Politics
The only policies that would pass the current House with MAGA Mike Johnson are huge tax cuts for the wealthy, unfunded of course, more military spending, and of course the big beautiful wall (which can be breached with a cordless saw bought at Home Depot). Lower inheritance taxes are really needed desperately, since the folks inheriting over $13.6 million really do need the money to buy groceries and pay rent.
Those are nice summaries, and they show the chaotic shallowness of Trump's policy thinking.
I’ll note the summaries don't capture the scarier things that Trump has said he will do via executive actions. You know, all of the truly authoritarian stuff. Trump says his political enemies are "evil", "human scum", and "vermin" -- and he will order the DOJ to investigate/prosecute/jail these horrible “enemies” of America. He has sometimes said this includes going after MSM companies since they are "enemies of the people". Trump has said he will be a “dictator” for a day. He has said he may suspend the Constitution. Trump has said he "deserves" to be able to run again in 2028. Perhaps Kevin can create a concise summary of all Trump's planned authoritarian actions/policies. It's hard to keep track of it all.
Explode the deficit while driving up inflation. How could that possibly go wrong?
It's all hot air, of course. He'll put in some tariffs to increase profits for a few of his big donors, use deportations to punish states/businesses he doesn't like, and lower taxes on the rich. It'll be drag on the economy, but if he controls interest rates he can put off the reckoning until he's out of office.
We're going to need bigger tariffs.
Using the term "policy vision" and Trump in the same sentence is causes me cognitive dissonance LOL.
High tariffs were tried in the US and Europe before. Didn't really work out for all kinds of reasons, short term and long.
Part of the long term is that if companies in your country don't have to compete with others because of tariffs making their products and services cheaper they inevitably become noncompetitive, exporting dries up and they fail as the foreign based competition becomes competitive even with the added charge. And the rest of comparative advantage Donald might have learned about in Econ 101 if he was actually paying attention - like the lower prices his people enjoy at Walmart or other Big Box stores.
And the internet and container shipping have erased the additional costs and impractibility of international shipping and services.
But you already know all that, and there's much more to it of course.
Policy… 😂
We’re doomed.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/gop-scheme-mass-voter-challenges
DESPITE DONALD TRUMP’S FLOP in last week’s debate against Kamala Harris, polls still have the race close. Naturally, most observers are trying to figure out who will win—meaning who will better persuade voters to register to vote, go to the polls, and vote for either candidate. But a better question to ask at this point is whether Trump and the Republican party machinery will succeed in their myriad efforts to cheat their way back into the White House. And this round, they are recruiting regular voters across the country to do the dirty work for them.
A “mass voter challenge” involves individual voters calling into question the eligibility of hundreds or thousands of voters all at once. Frivolous mass voter challenges picked up after the 2020 election and the viral spread of the Big Lie after Trump lost dozens of legal challenges and audits. Rather than focusing on lawsuits over vote counts, private groups with Republican backing are now reportedly pre-emptively challenging perceived deficiencies in voter eligibility in a bid to “clean up” voter rolls before the election.
From September 2023 to May 2024, there was a 55 percent increase in the number of these challenges in Michigan alone, according to an analysis by Protect Democracy.
Like his marriages, Trump is not known for keeping his promises.