Normally, the self-important, gazillionaire libs of the All In Podcast can be tiresome. But their recent 49-minute Trump interview demands watching, as a window into Trump’s agenda, particularly in the economic realm.
Trump’s remarkable ability to magnetically pull disparate constituencies into his orbit is proceeding exponentially. Consider Bitcoin. He has made it mandatory for participants in that sector to support him, otherwise the Janet Yellens and Elizabeth Warrens will outlaw its existence. Or his tax-free tips proposal, attracting millions of service workers — a proposal that drew laughter from 80 elite CEOs Trump recently met behind closed doors. Trump will laugh all the way to the November polls.
Trump has adopted politically astute positions for issues across the board. Democrats are trying equally hard to drive away as many constituencies as possible, an extraordinary political moment. Trump practices unification; Democrats excel at division. When Trump warns what will happen if he is not elected, no one doubts him.
Contrast Trump’s continuous stream of nuance and substance below with fake “news” accounts of his meeting with CEOs: [They] “said that he was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought, was all over the map.” The reality is quite different. Recall that absent congressional action, Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire next year.
There were a few surprises. Trump proposed providing a visa for foreign students graduating from American colleges: “We force the brilliant people” to return to their home countries. This makes too much sense. As the podcasters noted, three of the four are immigrants. They were all in on this proposal, along with the promise of more H1-B visas.
Trump will vaporize the Department of Education:
“We’re going to send education back to the States. We’re going to give them approximately half the number of dollars and they’re going to have so much money, like they’ve never had before because they can spend a fraction of what we’re spending right now and have much better school systems… We’ll have a tiny little group to make sure everyone’s teaching at least English and perhaps proper math, etc., etc. But very little.”
As the group noted after Trump departed, while a step in the right direction, education is only 3% of the budget. He has similar plans for the EPA: “The environment can be controlled by the states instead of this big bureaucracy in Washington, DC.” This addresses the budget’s low-hanging fruit. Entitlements are where the real money resides, a third rail no politician will approach prior to an election. Economic realities will soon force massive cuts.
In the international realm, Trump noted Iran was broke from sanctions when he left but Biden pumped money in, enabling the attacks on Israel: “Iran now has $250 billion cash. They made it all in three-and-a-half years and now they’re much tougher to deaI with.” It is his intent to bring Iran into the Abraham Accords. He exited the WHO, saving us $500 million annually, while Biden returned. The Paris Accord was similar, yet somehow John Kerry survived:
The Paris Accord was a disaster for us. We were going to pay a trillion dollars and other countries were paying nothing. Russia was paying nothing. China was paying nothing. It didn’t even kick in for China until 2030, whereas with us it kicked in immediately. So I got rid of the Paris Accord.
Trump desires a reciprocal trade act to deal with China and others:
“The reciprocal act is I think a very important thing when these countries, and I don’t mean just China, we have other countries. You could take the European Union. They don’t want our farm product; and they don’t want our cars; and they don’t want anything. We have a massive deficit right there. But you could go with many countries and they essentially do things to us, and we should do things to them. Basically, it should be reciprocal.”
Unsurprising proposals included such things as clean coal, nuclear reactors, ending the Green New Deal, no NATO expansion and a quick Ukrainian peace, border wall completion, etc.
“Why don’t people understand universally that lower taxation is better for productivity? Well they don’t understand it, and it’s such an interesting question. Because you look at some of these places like Chicago and New York and L.A. and so many more — you know I’d hate to even mention the three because there are worse examples than that — you look at what’s happened in Oakland and you look at what’s happened in some cities that are disappearing. I mean they’re literally just crime waves that nobody lives there except for criminals. Because you can’t live there, you can’t survive there physically.”
Forget the missing Nobel Peace Prize for the Abraham Accords. Trump deserves the economics prize. Trump’s tariff focus is hardly half-baked. It is a considered strategy to reverse de-dollarization, America’s greatest threat.
“Tariffs give you two things: they give you economic gain but they also give you political gain… We’re losing power, we’re losing a lot of, you know, countries on the dollar. I mean they’re going like flies. If we ever lose that, that’s the equivalent of losing a war… Saudi Arabia is willing to now go in various different currencies instead of the dollar. This is a tragedy. This is a big thing that’s happening against our country and we cannot let that happen. With tariffs it gives you a tremendous power.
The group concluded: “We have been fed a narrative of what President Trump looks like.” Who knew?
Douglas Schwartz blogs on history, politics, and economics at The Great Class War.
Image: Sundance
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