Also he will invite us all to dinner
So people voted for Trump thinking he would make housing cheaper?
Do they know what he’s been doing for the past half-century? His day job, if you like? His one skill?
Is Trump serious about massive tariff hikes that could increase prices for US consumers as soon as he begins a second presidency, which was won partly because voters were so frustrated with inflation and costs of housing and groceries?
And they thought Trump would lower the costs of housing? Really?
Just curious.
Let them eat hamberders!
Tariffs are one of those things that seem like a solution for a problem. Global trade has made life miserable for the working class in America, functionally turning it from a term for lower-middle-class to a euphemism for ‘working poor’. So if tariffs cut down on global trade, that’s a good thing, right?
Of course, every economist will tell you it doesn’t work that way, but when they explain why, it gets much more complicated than folks are willing to learn (especially when the best of them use the usual caveats common to experts in a field–most real experts will acknowledge all sorts of uncertainties (unlike Trump), and so will leave openings that a simple-minded thinker like Trump can exploit in speeches.
Meanwhile, the ultra-wealthy don’t care about inflation; they’re largely immune to it in any real fashion. Once you get past $10M or so, it’s not about what you can buy, it’s about keeping score against your peers. It’s not like any of them can’t afford whatever it is they desire. So the fact that tariffs cause runaway inflation doesn’t bother Trump, because it still makes all the rich richer. The scores keep going up, like a freemium idle game on your cell phone.
Bernie Sanders pointed out how, since NAFTA was enacted, wages have gone down due to so many imported cheap labor products coming onto the market. And that’s when the Democrats started losing the Unions, because Clinton was largely responsible for NAFTA. So, that’s how Trump gets them on tariffs. Of course, the reduction in goods coming from other countries allows American manufacturers to raise prices to meet demand, leading to the same economic pressures that were inflationary during the pandemic. And since trade is a global game of buying and selling, our trading partners are going to raise tariffs on American goods. Multinationals in Canada and Mexico that arose due NAFTA will be fine selling their stuff, but American exporters will suffer.
So on the one hand tariffs and gutting the construction, food processing, and agricultural workforces will cause massive inflation. On the other hand, deporting 10 million people will free up a lot of homes for others to claim I guess? Whichever way you look at it, even one tenth of what is proposed will cause massive harm.