Public Comment

America under trump: a layman's predictions

Jack Bragen
Friday November 18, 2016 - 01:08:00 PM

Donald Trump won the election to the Presidency with promises of "making America great again" in which he seduced voters into believing we could create another post-WWII economy. There are numerous reasons why this isn't realistic, and why any attempt to bring the U.S. back to the late 1940's will have dire consequences for our country and for the world.  

The U.S. relies very heavily on guest workers and on foreign manufacturing. Trying to tamper with this will wreck everything that currently works. The main products for which the U.S. is responsible are innovation, information technology, sales of weapons of mass destruction, and financial control.  

The U.S. is not primarily a manufacturing economy. China is. We should let China do what they are good at, and we should continue doing the things we're good at. Almost all manufactured goods that you purchase at Wal-Mart are from China.  

The U.S. doesn't perform its own dirty work. For that, we rely on guest workers, people whose background is that of far harsher conditions than we can imagine, and who work incredibly hard for us for less than minimum wage. People born in the U.S., especially Caucasian people, would never be willing to do such work. Most people born in the U.S. are raised to aspire to professional employment.  

If we deport all of the undocumented workers and implement the 35 percent trade tariff, both of which Trump promised, things would quickly fall apart.  

One of the first things we might notice will be a food shortage. We might soon discover that no one is available to do our landscaping, to clean our office buildings, to do construction cleanup, to bus tables at restaurants.  

We will see a sharp increase in the price of manufactured goods, and many of the products we are accustomed to buying may be completely unavailable. This is because we are not currently set up to manufacture our own products.  

Because of all of this disruption, the public could go into emotional shock. Conditions could worsen due to widespread panic, and society could spiral out of control. What happens after that, one can only guess. Would Trump institute martial law if people are rioting?  

Of course, none of this is going to happen because saner heads will advise Trump to leave things pretty much as they are while giving some appearance of revolutionizing everything. Guest workers will still be here, but they will have fewer rights than they had before Trump, and they will be criminalized more. But we need them and there is no way that they will be deported.  

We will continue to manufacture in other countries and we will continue to purchase manufactured goods from China, because we have no other choice.  

The other option would be to let all of the people out of the prisons and jails who are doing hard sentences for nonviolent offenses, and put those individuals into the jobs left vacant by deported people. Yet, that will not happen, either.  

In short, not much will change under the new President. This is due to the fact that the people truly in control of things like it the way it is. As President, Trump will have limited power, and any actions that are excessively ill-advised will be blocked by the Republican Congress.