President Trump Backslides into Keynesianism on Immigration, Trade, Fed Policy

By
Shane Trejo
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Donald Trump won the presidency in historical fashion on an ‘America First’ platform in 2016, but it is common for campaign promises to go by the wayside once power is obtained. Heading into his re-election campaign, Trump appears to be abandoning his mandate and accepting more globalist policies regarding the economy.

Earlier today, Trump called for inflationary ‘Quantitative Easing’ policies to prop up the economy after a March jobs report showed lagging growth.

“I personally think the Fed should drop rates, they’ve really slowed us down,” Trump said today. “There’s no inflation. In terms of quantitative tightening, it should be quantitative easing.”

“I think they should drop rates and get rid of quantitative tightening. I think you’d see a rocket ship,” Trump added.

Trump had previously bashed quantitative easing on Twitter while his predecessor Barack Obama was in office, but has done a complete 180 now that he is in the commander-in-chief.

Trump is also adopting policies on immigration that are diametrically opposed to policies he had supported in the past. Instead of sharply restricting legal immigration, Trump now claims we need more workers to further boost corporate profits.

“I need people coming in because we need people to run the factories and plants and companies that are moving back in,” Trump said to reporters back in Feburary. “We need people.”

“We need people in our country because our unemployment numbers are so low, and we have massive numbers of companies coming back into our country,” Trump added.

But recent job numbers fly in the face of Trump’s declaration. The March jobs report shows that manufacturing and construction jobs – the ones most important for Trump’s base of blue collar workers – are waning with fields like health care and education which are propped up by government spending being the only steady source for job creation.

With many debt-fueled economic bubbles on the horizon ready to pop, Trump’s economic boom is tenuous at best. Trump’s new plans to roll out the red carpet for cheap foreign labor to squeeze ordinary Americans out of jobs is not going to help matters.

On the trade front, President Trump is still working his tariff push against China, which has achieved significant results and may achieve more to come, but is offering more of the same for trade deals with regional partners.

The New American Magazine has blown the whistle about Trump’s proposed United States, Mexico, and Canada (USMCA) trade deal that retains many of the same NAFTA/TPP provisions devastating to US sovereignty:

The proposed USMCA has been widely portrayed as a replacement for NAFTA, which supposedly will no longer exist. Yet an honest look at the new agreement shows that what will no longer exist is the highly unpopular NAFTA name. In fact, not only does the USMCA retain sovereignty-diminishing provisions found in NAFTA, but it actually strengthens and expands them…

Consistent with other globalist schemes, the USMCA follows the “rules-based system” of compliance to international authorities such as the World Trade Organization, International Labor Organization, a plethora of United Nations conventions including the Law of Sea treaty, and the furtherance of “sustainable development,” which is mentioned no less than six times in the environment chapter…

Among the most revealing and unsurprising aspects of these transnational committees, which underscores the value of the USMCA to the Deep State, is the stated objective of the North American Competitiveness Committee. In the USMCA’s Chapter 26 on competitiveness, all three countries agree to establish a Committee on Competitiveness, or a North American Competitiveness Committee, with “a view to promoting further economic integration among the Parties and enhancing the competitiveness of North American exports.” In other words, the committee’s objective is not about making the United States, Mexico, and Canada more competitive with each other, but making the three of them as a bloc more competitive with the rest of the world, hence its function to promote “further economic integration” between the three countries.

When observing who is operating the day to day operations of the White House, it becomes obvious why Trump has shifted. Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner, the New York City limousine liberal, has invited in the foxes to guard the hen house. He has globalist phony conservative fronts like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, and the George W. Bush Center essentially dictating immigration and economic policy for the Trump administration. Trump’s 2020 team is also staffed by a who’s who of GOP establishment hacks, another troubling indicator he is headed in the wrong direction.

Trump’s apparent change has earned him an understandably great deal of ire from libertarians:

While criticism from libertarians is to be expected toward any government figure, Trump’s base is starting to get the picture as well as Trump’s policies begin to resemble the old Bush-era status quo.

If Trump wants his supporters to be as raucous and energetic next year as they were in 2016, he needs to tune out advisers like Kushner who are nudging him toward the establishment, and re-double his ‘America First’ focus on trade, immigration and banking policy. Otherwise, Trump’s chances for a second presidential term may be in jeopardy.