A Second Trump Presidency Would Be Terrible for the Economy

Following the Eating Pets imbroglio, one would think that undecided voters would have their doubts quelled about how to vote in November. What more is there to say?

This sociopath stood by while his violent mob smashed their way into the Capitol searching for the vice president in order to lynch him for disloyalty. When asked about this later, Trump didn't deny encouraging the attempted murder. He justified the mob.

This would-be autocrat has called for military tribunals to try his critics, promised pardons for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and cannot focus sufficiently to remember at the end of a sentence what he started to say at the beginning.

Though his supporters perceive him to be strong, he is in fact a weakling looking for approval from the thugs of the world. He will abandon Ukraine to suck up to Vladimir Putin, which will end the war all right, but by a method no American should countenance -- surrender.

Kamala Harris, by contrast, is a sane, somewhat-left-of-center Democrat who is making a bid for centrist voters by deep-sixing her Medicare for All dalliance and other 2019 bids for progressive credibility. On the matters over which presidents have the most sway, foreign policy, she is more "conservative" than Trump in that she promises unflinching support of NATO, Ukraine and vigorous U.S. world leadership.

On matters over which she has the least scope of action, domestic policy, she is likely to be thwarted by Republicans in Congress. And this is key: She will not attempt to overrule domestic opposition by unconstitutional means.

A June Washington Post survey found that 61% of undecided voters rate the economy as the most important issue in the election, and 50% of Americans rated inflation as the top concern for the nation. It's worth bearing in mind that inflation has cooled dramatically since its post-pandemic spike to 9.1% in June of 2022. In August, the Consumer Price Index dropped to 2.5%, low enough that a Federal Reserve rate cut is widely expected this month. This soft landing is an accomplishment.

It's also true -- though the number of voters who believe this can meet in a closet -- that presidents have little ability to bring down inflation. Together with Congress, presidents can contribute to inflation, and both Biden and Trump arguably did that. The massive COVID relief bills passed under Trump and Biden flooded the country with cash.

But the relief packages were thoroughly bipartisan efforts, and who's to say they were even wrong? While some of us thought the American Rescue Plan was too much stimulus considering all that had already been passed, one cannot reasonably argue that providing a backstop to the economy in the face of a 100-year health emergency was an example of wasteful spending.

By 52 to 48, voters think Trump is better positioned to handle the economy as president.

Well, that's bonkers. This is where Trump's gross misbehavior may serve him well. His opponents spend so much time responding to his flagrant lies, unprecedented threats, invitations to violence and crude sexual innuendos that we have little bandwidth to deal with his completely fantastical and absurd policy proposals.

Asked about child care costs, he proposes huge new tariffs (anywhere from 20 to 100% tariffs), claiming that they would generate so much free money that it would obliterate the federal deficit and have enough left over to pay for everyone's child care. If a high school debater said something like that, he'd be laughed off the stage.

While presidents can do little to bring down inflation, one thing that pretty much all economists agree upon is that presidents can goose inflation by imposing tariffs. The kind of import taxes Trump envisions, according to the Peterson Institute, would cost the average American household an additional $2,600 a year. Tariffs are taxes (repeat three times).

Harris would be better positioned to make this case if Biden had not maintained so many of the Trump-era tariffs, but at least she isn't proposing a blanket 10% tax on imports as Trump is (though sometimes he says 20%, or 60% for China's goods, and 100% on countries that abandon the dollar).

Another Trump idea is to deport millions of illegal immigrants. How would this work? At present, ICE has 20,000 employees, and it is believed that this number is inadequate even to cope with border crossers. How many more ICE agents would be required to hunt down, arrest and deport millions of illegal immigrants? Leaving aside the cruelty of this proposal -- the American-citizen children whose parents would be deported, the hardship for people who've grown up here and know no other nation/language, the fear and insecurity legal immigrants would suffer -- the costs would be astronomical. Prices of food, hotel stays, restaurant meals and new homes would rise. Plus, the taxes illegal immigrants now pay (including to Social Security and Medicare) would be lost.

Trump's most dangerous tendencies concern flouting the law and using the power of the state against his opponents. But those who think his autocratic appetites are acceptable because he knows how to manage the economy are not paying attention to what he's actually saying.

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Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, "Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism," is available now.