When it comes to policies, Donald Trump’s campaign is founded on a few jokes.
The joke that the U.S. will build a wall along its border with Mexico when Trump is president and that Mexico will pay for it.
The joke that Trump will be able to cut taxes by nearly $10 trillion over the next decade and somehow not add to the federal debt, despite the Republican candidate’s plans for hefty new spending on immigration enforcement and the lack of commensurate spending cuts.
And the joke that the federal government, with Trump in charge, will set to work deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants.
So what happens when these jokes of policies are taken seriously? The punch lines fall flat.
Earlier this month, Trump economic adviser David Malpass took to the pages of The New York Times to argue that his boss’ economic plans represent just the shock to the system that the U.S. needs right now — with lower tax rates and the elimination of the estate tax.
But there’s ample evidence to the contrary.
In June, a team led by economist Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics took Trump’s stated policies and campaign pledges at face value and assessed the long-term impact on the U.S. economy.
Despite the lower tax rates and the estate tax elimination that Malpass touts, Zandi and company concluded, “By the end of [Trump’s] presidency, there are close to 3.5 million fewer jobs and the unemployment rate rises to as high as 7 percent, compared with below 5 percent today. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, the average American household’s after-inflation income will stagnate, and stock prices and real house values will decline.” And the average household is unlikely to benefit from the elimination of the estate tax, 97 percent of which is paid by the richest 10 percent of taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center.
From a budgetary standpoint, Trump’s tax policies also spell disaster. A Tax Policy Center analysis that projected the Republican candidates’ proposals would result in a $9.5 trillion drop in federal tax collections over the next decade also projected that the set of policies would boost the national debt by $11.2 trillion in that same period, or a nearly 40 percent jump. (Tax Policy Center analysts projected Democrat Hillary Clinton’s tax plans would reduce the federal debt by $1.2 trillion over the same period.)
On immigration, the issue that Trump has allowed to define his campaign, the lack of substance and seriousness is also painfully clear. For example, Trump has pledged since the start of his campaign to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, which is one of the policies the Moody’s Analytics report cites for detracting from economic growth during a Trump presidency. But developments in recent days have revealed Trump has nothing resembling a serious policy to carry out the pledge. Neither he nor his campaign allies want to discuss the details of a costly, inhumane, inane plan.
Trump has also proven himself unable to seal the deal on another pledge central to his campaign: getting Mexico to fund construction of the border wall. In a Republican primary debate last October, Trump essentially said that he and only he would be able to convince the U.S.’s southern neighbor to underwrite the wall’s construction.
“A politician cannot get them to pay,” he said during a debate hosted by CNBC. “I can.”
But, so far, Trump has been unable. After Trump met with President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico on Aug. 31, the Mexican leader insisted on multiple occasions that his nation will not pay for the wall.
Does that mean Trump doesn’t have the magic touch that has been so central to his candidacy? That was the same magic touch Trump was to deploy to negotiate more favorable trade agreements and to keep U.S. corporations from moving jobs abroad.
Trump’s campaign is founded on policies — and a personality — that are jokes. It’s no wonder neither he nor his allies can admit to the reality of their dangerous consequences.