Election 2024 Video of the Week: Trump’s bonkers economic plan

Video #4

Friends,

This week’s Election 2024 Video of the Week focuses on Trump’s bizarre economic plan.

To remind you, the goal of this series is not to preach to the converted but to give you facts, analysis, and arguments to share with those who aren’t.

Please share — especially with people who are leaning toward Trump, are wavering in their support of Kamala Harris, or haven’t made up their minds.

Earlier this week, Trump summarized his economic “plan.” Not surprisingly, it’s incoherent and filled with lies. In today’s video, I focus on five key parts of it.

#1: Trump’s crazy tariff plan

Trump seems genuinely confused about what tariffs are and who pays them. 

TRUMP: We are taking in billions and billions of dollars in tariffs that China is paying for.

Nope. Tariffs are not paid by the other country. They’re paid by the American importer, with the cost typically passed onto American consumers, as even Fox Business pundits have to admit.

Targeted tariffs on specific products can give American-made goods an edge over imports, but there’s no strategy behind the tidal wave of tariffs Trump is proposing.

But Trump wants you to pay at least a 60 percent tax on everything imported from China and a 10 percent tax on everything imported from anywhere else. This would cost the average family an estimated $2,500 extra per year.

And this is a regressive tax, taking a higher percentage of the paychecks of the working class and the poor than out of the incomes of the wealthy.

#2: Trump’s plan for monopolies would create more of them

If you’ve watched our other videos, you know that corporate monopolies are among the biggest drivers of inflation. When there are fewer competitors, corporations can raise prices without worrying about losing customers to a cheaper competitor. Trump and the MAGA team want to make this worse.

Trump’s Project 2025 specifically seeks to fast-track airline mergers.

And as part of Trump’s efforts to solicit campaign donations from Big Oil executives, he’s suggested fast-tracking oil mergers. This would let them pump up your gas prices.

And speaking of gas prices, let’s talk about how …

#3: Trump would hike energy prices

Trump’s promising to kill the Biden-Harris administration’s clean energy incentives and fuel efficiency standards. This means you’ll be spending more on fuel because your car will need more gas and your appliances will use more electricity.

#4: Trump would make your money worth less

The American economy is strong right now compared to those of other nations, so the American dollar is worth more vs. the euro, the yen, and other major currencies. At a moment when Americans are worried about how far their dollar goes, most people would call that a good thing.

But Trump and his economic advisers are reportedly so obsessed with trade deficits that they’re looking for ways to devalue the dollar. 

This might help big corporations that export products, but it would also raise import prices and overheat a U.S. economy already running hot.

#5: Trump’s wild deportation plan would drive up costs still further

Trump would decimate the American workforce — and he’s bragging about it.

TRUMP: We’ll carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.

Putting aside the horrific moral consequences, this would make the whole economy collapse.

There are more than a million undocumented laborers in construction, over a million undocumented farm workers, and about a million undocumented food service workers. What do you think will happen to the price of food and housing if these workers are suddenly deported? Prices will explode.

By the way, these are not jobs that Americans born here in the United States are competing for, because most pay very little and many are dangerous.

In sum, Trump has no understanding of the economy.

He was terrible at business — which is why he’s driven so many businesses into the ground. (He’s even driven casinos into the ground. How do you lose money running a casino?)

Given another chance, he’ll drive the American economy into the ground, too.

A tad more than five weeks to Election Day. Please share this video, and do whatever else you can.

Thanks for joining me today.