Is the Republican Party the Party of Trump?

Donald Trump: “You’re Fired!”          Photo Credit: Flickr/WalkingGeek

Democrats are having a field day, chortling at Donald Trump’s candidacy for the Republican nomination. The Huffington Post and Policy.Mic thought the Democratic National Committee had the perfect response to Trump’s candidacy when their national press secretary Holly Shulman released this statement with tongue in cheek:

Today, Donald Trump became the second major Republican candidate to announce for president in two days. He adds some much-needed seriousness that has previously been lacking from the GOP field, and we look forward to hearing more about his ideas for the nation.

In fact when Trump gives a speech, it usually seems to be a rambling, stream-of-consciousness non-construction. Bombastic and insulting, he makes me wince every time I listen to him. The main message that seems to stick out is something like “I’ll be so good, it will make your head spin!” His gratuitously insulting statements about hispanics and women are becoming legendary.  

Democrats would like the nation to believe Trump shows the heart and soul of the GOP. Is this really the case, or is Trump someone different from whom his supporters think?

What exactly are his positions? When I went to his official website, donaldjtrump.com, and looked at his positions page, I could only find a number of ways he would handle the illegal immigration problem. At least one of his proposals, the elimination of birthright citizenship, is constitutionally suspect and could only be implemented with the repeal of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. He does not explain with what he would replace it in order to decide who is a citizen. Another provision is one for building an honest-to-goodness wall on the Mexican border, with which many can agree, but then he adds the real howler of a joke that he will make Mexico pay for it! Right. He then suggests all sorts of fees to be placed on Mexican interactions with the U.S. (visas of various kinds, port entry fees, tariffs on trade, etc) to pay for the wall. If he implemented all those, he might have Mexico ready to go to war with us.

Particularly troubling to me is his fierce opposition to free trade. The only reference to foreign trade I could find on his positions page was this statement: “Decades of disastrous trade deals and immigration policies have destroyed our middle class.” Nevertheless, he has spoken extensively on it in stump speeches and interviews, and has written about it in a book entitled Time to Get Tough. In the book he says he would like a 20% tariff on all imported goods ( a little Smoot-Hawley, anyone?) He has also expressed opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), one of the few Obama initiatives most Republicans can support.

It is hard to reconcile his reputation for being a canny businessman with his ignorance about economics. He is certainly ignorant about Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage. Ricardo’s law is one of the few statements about economics that is accepted as true by economists of almost all persuasions: marxists, other socialists, Keynesians, and neoclassical economists. Only a handful of heterodox economists reject it. Once the not-simple concept of comparative advantage is understood, Ricardo’s law is simple enough that it is the only economic law (to my knowledge) susceptible to mathematical proof. It states that if one of two nations has a comparative advantage in producing a good over the other nation, then both nations will profit if the country with the comparative advantage exports the good to the country without the advantage.

What Trump is focusing on are initial transitional costs to the importing country. When the trade begins the workers in the importing country who used to produce the imported good are no longer needed and are layed-off. However, the importing country also saves all the capital it used to allocate to produce that good. It can now take that capital and invest it to produce something else for which it has a comparative advantage. The big fly in the ointment is that this will happen rapidly only if the importing country has a business-friendly environment allowing capital to flow rapidly to projects of greatest value. A business-friendly economic environment is sadly lacking in the U.S., causing economic pain for displaced workers to be prolonged. If you doubt the truth of this last sentence, I suggest you read the posts The Burden of Economic Regulations, The Debilitating Effects of Obamacare, Economic Effects of the Dodd-Frank Act, Current Economic Effects of the Federal Reserve, and Economic Effects of Current Tax Policy. It would be much better for Trump to attack all of these government generated obstacles to economic health than to attack free-trade.

Those Republicans who support Trump should also learn their candidate’s views about anything are ephemeral. Donald Trump changes his views and his political party like other people change their clothes. David Fahrenthold in the Washington Post believes Trump is making up his platform on the fly as time passes and as it seems politically attractive. On the issues of ISIS and illegal immigrants, Fahrenthold documents how Trump’s positions have changed day-by-day. This penchant is certainly consistent with the stream-of-consciousness style of Trump’s speeches. On taxes, Trump has expressed positions that almost cover the entire space of possibilities. One time he will say he really wants to sock the rich (although he does not say by how much). On another day he will express support for a flat tax. One year he thinks Hillary Clinton would make a very good leader, and generously donates to the Clinton Foundation as well as to other Democratic politicians. One year he is registered as a Democrat, and in another he is a Republican.

Considering all this, one begins to get the feeling Trump will say just about anything to any group whom he is trying to influence. This observation has led Bobby Jindal, Republican Governor of Louisiana and presidential candidate to say that Trump is not a conservative nor a liberal, not a Democrat nor a Republican, but is  fundamentally a narcissist and an egomaniac.

I would like to ask my fellow Republicans: Is this a man who can really represent your beliefs? Is this a man you can trust?

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