Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Trump’s Biggest Con: Pretending to Support American Workers
d8a347b41db1ddee634e2d67d08798c102ef09ac
By The New York Times
Published 2 months ago on
October 29, 2024

Former President Donald Trump speaks alongside steelworkers during a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pa., Oct. 19, 2024. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)

Share

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Paul Krugman
Opinion
Opinion by Paul Krugman on Oct. 28, 2024.

Donald Trump has always been a con man. As an entrepreneur, he left behind a trail of investors who lost money in failed ventures even as he profited, students who paid thousands for worthless courses, unpaid contractors and more. Even amid his current presidential campaign, he has been hawking overpriced gold sneakers and Trump Bibles printed in China.

But Trump’s biggest, potentially most consequential con has been political: portraying himself as a different kind of Republican, an ally of working Americans. This self-portrait has been successful so far, notably in gaining Trump significant support among working-class people of color — although the carnival of racism at his Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, in which a comedian opened the event by describing Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” and made a watermelon joke in reference to a Black man, may dent that support in the campaign’s closing days.

The truth is that to the extent that Trump’s policy plans — or, in some cases, concepts of plans — differ from GOP orthodoxy, it’s because they are even more antilabor and pro-plutocrat than his party’s previous norm.

Background: Since the 1970s, our two main political parties have diverged sharply on economic ideology. In general, Democrats favor higher taxes on the rich and a stronger social safety net; Republicans favor lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy paid for in part by cutting social programs.

Kamala Harris is, in this sense, a normal Democrat, calling for tax hikes that would primarily affect high-income Americans while expanding tax credits for families with children; she has also proposed expanding Medicare to cover home health care for seniors, which would be a big deal for millions of families.

An aside: I really don’t understand people who claim that Harris hasn’t supplied enough policy detail. All I can think is that they’re looking for something to complain about so they can sound evenhanded.

Has Trump deviated from Republican norms? While he was president, not really. His 2017 tax cut strongly favored high-income Americans. Now he wants to make that tax cut, many of whose provisions will expire in 2025, permanent. He has also floated the idea of a further large cut in corporate taxes (much of which could, by the way, ultimately benefit foreign investors).

As president, Trump tried to push through deep cuts in Medicaid, although he didn’t succeed. And while he says that he won’t cut Social Security and Medicare, his policy proposals would undermine these programs’ financial foundations.

Trump has also made some tax proposals that may sound pro-worker but aren’t, such as ending taxes on tips; many tipped workers don’t make enough to pay income taxes, and those who do are mostly in a low tax bracket.

If Trump has broken with standard GOP economic policy, he has done so by intensifying efforts to redistribute income upward. For he is proposing higher taxes on the working class in the form of a large national sales tax — which is essentially what his tariffs would be. And this tax would be highly regressive — a large burden on middle- and lower-income families, a trivial hit to the 1%.

If you put reasonable estimates of the effects of the Harris and Trump tax plans on the same chart, they’re more or less mirror images. Trump would raise taxes on most Americans, with only the top few percent coming out ahead; Harris would do the reverse.

So, no, Trump isn’t a friend to working-class Americans; quite the opposite. Why, then, do millions of people believe otherwise?

Some of it probably reflects racial tension: White men without college degrees have lost ground relative to other groups since 1980, and some of them, alas, surely feel an affinity for the racism and misogyny we saw at Madison Square Garden. But as I said, some Latino and Black Americans also appear to have bought into Trump’s spiel. Why?

Well, Americans correctly remember Trump’s prepandemic economy as an era of strong job growth and rising wages — largely, I’d argue, because Republicans in Congress opened the fiscal spigots after austerity during the Obama years slowed recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Many also implicitly discount or memory-hole the high unemployment of Trump’s final year in office. And they’re still frustrated about higher prices, the consequence of the inflation surge of 2021-22 — even though this surge was a global pandemic phenomenon, and wages adjusted for inflation are now higher than they were right before the COVID-19 pandemic.

What relatively few people realize, I believe, is that if he wins next week, Trump’s antiworker agenda will be much broader than anything he managed to do in 2017-21. Back then, he raised average tariffs on Chinese goods by about 20 percentage points, but China accounts for only about 15% of U.S. imports; now he’s talking about imposing similar tariffs across the board, and 60% on imports from China. Overall, we’re talking about a sales tax roughly 10 times as large as his last venture.

Trump, then, is anything but pro-working-class Americans. If many believe otherwise, well, they aren’t the first victims of his lifelong career as a con man.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Paul Krugman/Damon Winter
c. 2024 The New York Times Company

RELATED TOPICS:

DON'T MISS

Illegal Immigrant Faces Murder Charges in Death of Woman Lit on Fire in NYC Subway

DON'T MISS

$1M Investment in Fresno Lender to Help Small Businesses Get Funding

DON'T MISS

Who Is Making a Difference in Fresno? Explore This List of 2024’s Shining Stars

DON'T MISS

Fresno State Tossed by Northern Illinois in Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

DON'T MISS

2 Rescued After Santa Cruz Wharf Partially Collapses Due to Heavy Surf From Major Pacific Storm

DON'T MISS

Spain Faces Threats of Terrorism and Unrest, US Warns in Travel Advisory

DON'T MISS

Bill Clinton Is Hospitalized With a Fever but in Good Spirits, Spokesperson Says

DON'T MISS

Media Relations Expert Leaves City Hall for Valley Children’s Hospital

DON'T MISS

Amar Augillard Departs the Fresno State Basketball Team

DON'T MISS

Former Bulldog QB Mikey Keene Commits to Michigan

UP NEXT

$1M Investment in Fresno Lender to Help Small Businesses Get Funding

UP NEXT

Who Is Making a Difference in Fresno? Explore This List of 2024’s Shining Stars

UP NEXT

Fresno State Tossed by Northern Illinois in Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

UP NEXT

2 Rescued After Santa Cruz Wharf Partially Collapses Due to Heavy Surf From Major Pacific Storm

UP NEXT

Spain Faces Threats of Terrorism and Unrest, US Warns in Travel Advisory

UP NEXT

Bill Clinton Is Hospitalized With a Fever but in Good Spirits, Spokesperson Says

UP NEXT

Media Relations Expert Leaves City Hall for Valley Children’s Hospital

UP NEXT

Amar Augillard Departs the Fresno State Basketball Team

UP NEXT

Former Bulldog QB Mikey Keene Commits to Michigan

UP NEXT

Thunderstorms on Christmas Eve? They’re in the Fresno Forecast

Fresno State Tossed by Northern Illinois in Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

4 hours ago

2 Rescued After Santa Cruz Wharf Partially Collapses Due to Heavy Surf From Major Pacific Storm

4 hours ago

Spain Faces Threats of Terrorism and Unrest, US Warns in Travel Advisory

5 hours ago

Bill Clinton Is Hospitalized With a Fever but in Good Spirits, Spokesperson Says

5 hours ago

Media Relations Expert Leaves City Hall for Valley Children’s Hospital

6 hours ago

Amar Augillard Departs the Fresno State Basketball Team

6 hours ago

Former Bulldog QB Mikey Keene Commits to Michigan

7 hours ago

Thunderstorms on Christmas Eve? They’re in the Fresno Forecast

7 hours ago

SE Fresno Voters Have Their Pick of Familiar Candidates to Succeed Chavez

7 hours ago

Fresno Residents Will Get an Extra Day to Put Out the Trash

7 hours ago

Illegal Immigrant Faces Murder Charges in Death of Woman Lit on Fire in NYC Subway

A man is facing murder and arson charges in New York City for allegedly setting a woman on fire inside a subway train and then watching her ...

3 hours ago

3 hours ago

Illegal Immigrant Faces Murder Charges in Death of Woman Lit on Fire in NYC Subway

3 hours ago

$1M Investment in Fresno Lender to Help Small Businesses Get Funding

4 hours ago

Who Is Making a Difference in Fresno? Explore This List of 2024’s Shining Stars

4 hours ago

Fresno State Tossed by Northern Illinois in Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

A closed wharf is seen in Santa Cruz, Calif., Monday, Dec. 23, 2024, after the pier partially collapsed and fell into the ocean. (AP/Martha Mendoza)
4 hours ago

2 Rescued After Santa Cruz Wharf Partially Collapses Due to Heavy Surf From Major Pacific Storm

5 hours ago

Spain Faces Threats of Terrorism and Unrest, US Warns in Travel Advisory

5 hours ago

Bill Clinton Is Hospitalized With a Fever but in Good Spirits, Spokesperson Says

6 hours ago

Media Relations Expert Leaves City Hall for Valley Children’s Hospital

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend