Trump: A Complete Charlatan

The New York Times just revealed that Donald Trump’s businesses have a cumulative debt of $650 million.

We could go on about his debt load versus his assets, but it’s a level of debt that’s twice as high as Trump claims to have.

The man lies like he breathes.

On top of being a liar, he’s a hypocrite too: He borrowed money from a Chinese bank, yet he constantly criticizes China’s business practices.

Even worse, he has based his entire campaign on a portrayal of the United States that is the complete opposite of reality.

Lies

He paints an America where jobs are disappearing, poverty is increasing, and wages are stagnating.

The reality is that unemployment is decreasing, as is poverty (though it remains high), and the median income has increased for the past two years.

Not only is his depiction contradicted by facts, but his proposed solutions would fix nothing, or even make things worse.

He claims to want to help the average worker, but plans to reduce taxes for those in the highest bracket and for corporations, which would primarily favor the rich.

The decrease in income would increase federal government debt… which he condemns.

Trump’s economic policies are like shooting yourself in both feet with a machine gun.

The former industrial Midwest has indeed seen its jobs go overseas.

You would have to be pretty naive or pretty desperate to believe that protectionist tariffs on products imported from China or Mexico would bring those jobs back.

Let’s write some science fiction and pretend for a moment that a fraction of those jobs will come back.

These jobs would pay much more than they do overseas.

Consequently, those higher salaries would be reflected in the prices of the products, which would be more expensive.

Those higher-priced goods would be harder to export and confined to the local market. It would be a return to the 1970s.

Evidently, in response to the tariffs on products exported to the United States, other countries would tax American goods on their soil.

Does the world need another trade war?

Even worse, if the U.S. government imposed retributive tariffs on imported goods, the prices of all basic items from overseas, like clothing or appliances, would increase.

And it’s the poor who devote the majority of their income to these necessities.

Deadly

In short, Trump’s economic policies would hurt those he claims to help.

They’re like shooting yourself in both feet with a machine gun.

Luckily, though nothing is certain, each day brings Trump one step further away from the White House.

Respectable Republicans want to avoid associating with him publicly; so much so that his campaign is essentially run by third-class apparatchicks and his own family members.

The fact remains that from a certain perspective, the harm is already done: He has introduced a toxic kind of politics and revived old false ideas.