Keep in mind that Trump did that quite successfully last time he was elected. He spoke in dire tones of a country headed toward disaster. Did the economy look successful? It was a false prosperity, buoyed up by low interest rates and doomed to fail when interest rates went up as they inevitably must. Was the stock market doing well? It was a bubble, about to burst. Did statistics say unemployment was below five percent? Government bureaucrats were lying, cooking the books to make Obama look good.
And then Trump was elected and immediately these problems vanished. All talk of a bubble ended, and stock gains were suddenly real. Interest rates were appropriately low and should not be raised. All those unemployment statistics that were fake last month suddenly became real. I worked for a Trump supporter, and his talk turned from inevitably doom and being glad Democrats would win because they could not escape blame to morning in America in one day. So it would doubtless be this time. Republicans who see our situation as catastrophic today will suddenly see it as great just as soon as Trump wins.
This is not to deny that the country has problems, just to be clear. Of course there are problems. There always have been and always will be. But consider seriously our situation and just how quickly Trump can wish things away, just by invoking the power of the Great Right Wing Noise Machine.
The Economy:
Fact: The economy is growing at a healthy clip. Unemployment is been below 4% for as long as it was before COVID. Inflation peaked out at nine percent and is now around 3.5% -- above target, but hardly catastrophic. No other country has recovered from COVID as quickly as we have. Prices have not fallen to what they were pre-pandemic, nor will they, regardless of who is in the White House. Also, the Fed has raised interest rates to combat inflation. Interest rates are higher than they have been in a generation. People are used to rates that are, by historical standards, abnormally low, and are feeling pinched as a result.
What Trump can do: He has already announced that his mere presence in the White House will be so stimulative as to end our economic problems, which is another way of saying he has not plans to do anything at all, other than the usual Republican tax cuts. Just take credit for the great economy. The Great Right Wing Noise Machine will join in and soon our economic problems will be forgotten.
Gas Prices:
Fact: The US is a net exporter of gas right now and is pumping more oil than ever before. Worldwide oil prices have come down from their peak, but are higher than pre-pandemic (let along during the pandemic!) There is room to debate why. I suspect the Russia-Ukraine war (two major oil producers) is a reason. OPEC may also be price squeezing. Biden cannot tout this as an accomplishment because Democrats' policy is to move to renewables.
What Trump can do: He will undoubtedly proclaim "Drill, baby, drill!" and ostentatiously remove all environmental restrictions on oil drilling. I do not know how much this will affect prices. I think we can safely assume it will not increase production overnight. He can also brag about how we are producing more oil than ever before and are a net exporter. That happened before he was elected, but the Great Right Wing Noise Machine won't tell anyone that. He has come out as strongly opposed to any alternatives to oil and gas, such as solar, wind farms, electric vehicles, etc. However, it would make imminent sense to quietly maintain subsidies and development of these things. The reason is obvious. Oil prices, after all, are a matter of supply and demand. Prices are high despite our pumping record amounts of oil. I admit to not knowing how much effect removing environmental regulations will have, but probably not as much as Republicans think. Meanwhile, creating alternatives to oil and gas reduce consumption and thereby bring down prices. Just as Biden is presiding over an oil boom and cannot boast about it, Trump could preside over a renewables boom and not boast about it. So long as it reduced oil demand and kept prices low, why not?
Budget and deficits:
Facts: The US has been spending more than it takes in since 2001. So long as interest rates were low, we could afford to borrow a great deal without paying too much in interest. However, now that interest rates have gone up, so has the cost of borrowing. The US really does have to trim its budget deficits, or the cost of debt service will eat up more and more of the budget. The deficit increased by Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, COVID relief measures, and stimulus measures to get the country going again. The stimulus worked. The US economy has recovered faster than any other country, and with no more inflation than anyone else.
Next year we are facing a perfect storm of deficit reduction. Trump's tax cuts are set to expire, as is the suspension of the income limit for subsidies on Obamacare, as well as much of the infrastructure and local government subsidies passed as part of COVID recovery. If all these are allowed to lapse, there will be major deficit reduction, but with significant pain.
What Trump can do: By sound economic principles, the boom, not the bust, is the time to cut deficits. There is no doubt that taking so much money out of the economy will hurt. But the hurt can be offset by an expanding private sector, and private sector expansion can be boosted by interest rate cuts. Assuming the economy is still booming by the end of 2025, and that interest rates are still high (yes, I know, these are assumptions), anyone serious about the deficit make a deal with the Fed -- let all these provisions expire, and the Fed compensates by cutting interest rates. Of course, no one is really serious about cutting the deficit. As a Republican, Trump's natural impulse will be to keep his tax cuts and let the spending lapse. If Democrats control at least one house of Congress, their impulse will be the opposite. Doubtless some sort of compromise can be worked out. But the point is, this does not have the same sort of urgency as the fiscal cliff under Obama. That time, the deficit was about to drop in a still-depressed economy, with interest rates as low as they could go. This time, there will be much more room to offset.
Crime:
Fact: Crime spiked with the pandemic and riots. It has since mostly fallen back to the pre-pandemic baseline. Trump's hysterical ranting about "immigrant crime" is pure fantasy, and nothing is so easy to solve as a problem that does not exist. Only two areas of crime remain elevated: (1) crime in Washington, D.C., and (2) carjacking. Carjacking is considered a "keystone" crime that can raise overall rates, so it is troubling.
What Trump can do: He is proclaiming that he will reduce DC's municipal autonomy and federalize law enforcement to crack down on crime in our nation's capital, which is a realistic option. Most crime is a state matter and there are constitutional constraints on what the federal government can do. However, given how mobile cars are and their close nexus to interstate commerce, it should be possible to pass some sort of federal anti-carjacking law that passes constitutional muster. There are probably anti-carjacking bills that would pass even if the Democrats control one or both houses of Congress. Certainly such legislation would be popular. Sponsor some sort of anti-carjacking bill, sign it with great bravado, and direct federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize enforcement. Then brag about our declining crime rates. As for the alleged "immigrant crime," prosecute a high profile case or two and have the Great Right Wing Noise Machine drop the subject. End of problem!
Immigration:
Fact: OK, this really is a problem. It is not as bad as right wing hysteria makes it sounds. We are not being "invaded." There is no "immigrant crime wave." Illegal immigrants are not sacking and pillaging our cities. But immigration rates are overwhelming our capacity to process it. Biden has somewhat reduced the rate with a combination of processing from afar and tightening the border, but it still vastly exceeds what we can handle. And let's face it. The US cannot admit everyone who wants to come here. Some restrictions are necessary. Biden made a huge forced error in abandoning Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy with nothing to take its place. A better option would be to leave the policy and work on making it more humane. So some sort of tightening of our border is inevitable.
What Trump can do: He can limit himself to border controls. Attempting to end all immigration, or all non-European immigration, let along mass deportations will quickly show just how dependent we are on immigrant labor. Anything approaching the sort of crackdown Trump is proposing will be disruptive and cause severe labor shortages, particularly in construction and agriculture, with predictable results to housing and food prices.
Foreign policy:
Fact: This is also a problem, though not a priority for most Americans. I assume that when Republicans say they are reluctantly supporting Trump as the lesser evil because Biden has been "catastrophic," they are referring to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. It also deals in counterfactuals, so this is less a matter of fact than speculation.
I think it quite likely that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would not have happened if Trump had won the 2020 election. Putin would have seen that he had a friend in the White House and would not have wanted to jeopardize that friendship. Besides, he would no doubt have preferred to wait until Trump withdrew from NATO, making the invasion much easier to pull off.
The Gaza war is a different matter. While Biden's policy toward the Middle East differed from Trump's in being less hostile toward Iran and less single-mindedly supportive of Saudi Arabia, he largely followed Trump's approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict of working to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states while papering over the Palestinian question. Hamas's October 7 attack was largely intended to thwart upcoming normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. I seems a safe assumption that Trump would also have sought to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and seen that his his ultimate foreign policy victory. It seems most likely that Hamas would have reacted exactly the same way. Trump hold no influence whatever with Hamas, nor does their death cult seem likely to have been intimidated by him.
What Trump can do: Most likely, by the time Trump is inaugurated the war in Gaza will have subsided to an occupation and low-grade insurgency. Trump can take credit for that. As for aid to Ukraine, Trump appears to have decided to treat the issue as a purely financial one, rather than a matter of ideological commitment. Meanwhile, the European powers are frantically scrambling for an alternative to US aid in financing the war. The best one they have found so far is the use of seized Russian assets to pay for weapons. Trump seems to approve of arms sales, as opposed to military aid, since it is an opportunity to make money. He call allow arms sales to Ukraine to his heart's content, so long as they are paid with confiscated Russian assets. My guess is that the Chinese and North Koreans will also prefer not to jeopardize their friendship with Trump by starting any wars and will be content to postpone any such designs until after his term of office. Iran is an interesting wild card and just might decide to develop a nuclear weapon, but Trump can always blame that his predecessor not stopping them.
Abortion: We know what Trump is going to do here. As little as possible. He will leave this issue entirely to the states and let them take the heat on it..
Can anyone doubt that as President, Trump would pardon everyone convicted of the January 6 election riot and any other crime committed on his behalf, as well as himself. He can forbid the Justice Department from prosecuting any political ally, no matter how egregious their conduct. I am not all that concerned about Trump using the Justice Department to go after political opponents for the simple reason that there will be too many external constraints. DOJ lawyers will have to find actual criminal statutes that Trump's opponents are purported to have broken. Their cases will have to get by a grand jury, motions to dismiss submitted to the judge and, if it actually comes to trial, a jury.
More dangerous are administrative actions, which have less external constraints. Trump can harass any individual or organization opposed to him with IRS audits and challenges to its non-profit status. He can impose a wide range of regulations (I admit to not knowing much about them) in a politically selective manner. He can approve or disapprove mergers, award or deny contracts based on political considerations and lean on agencies to cook their books to make him look good (see Sharpiegate for a trivial example). Our media have little government reliance, but he can lean on social media and perhaps use regulatory actions to promote right wing reports.
But probably most dangerous of all are the use of informal enforcement mechanisms by deranged followers. Trump can tweet information about people who challenge him, including addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses and social media. He can have the Right Wing Noise Machine amplify his reports. And deranged followers can deluge anyone who challenges Trump with death threat and actual physical violence. He can forbid the Justice Department from prosecuting such instances, and pardon the offenders. He can unleash violence, or at least threats of violence, with a nod and a wink, and never anything direct enough to open him to criminal or civil liability.
And all of this will fly under most people's radar screens. It won't bother most Americans, after all. They will see a booming economy (inherited from his predecessor), falling crime (inherited from his predecessor), an anti-carjack bill, and boasting all over the right wing media. Harassment of political rivals will take place out of the public eye, notices only by serious news junkies. Even Trump's right wing mobs don't engage in the sort of conspicuous lawlessness you see on the authoritarian left. They do not engage in mass riots (except on January 6), or occupy buildings, or block traffic. They target specific individuals, mostly on the phone and online, sometimes at their houses, but always outside the public eye.
And here is the real dilemma in dealing with a Trump presidency. If he takes socially disruptive activity, like mass deportations, or attempting to repeal Obamacare, it will hurt his popularity, probably even among the party faithful and make it easier to stand up to him and defeat him, but the damage to the wider society and will be more serious. If he refrains from such actions, and focuses narrowly on political rivals and subverting democracy, the larger society will go on, undamaged, but the harm to our institutions will be absolutely real and extremely hard to oppose.
Pick your poison.
PS: And, right on cue, an announcement that OPEC plans to increase oil production in September to compete with increased US production. Furthermore the International Energy Agency predicts reduced oil prices for the foreseeable future, largely as a result of reduced oil consumption and increased used of alternatives. I expect falling gas price in September will be too late in the election season to do Biden much too -- it will just look like more political pandering. But everything looks set to allow Trump to claim credit for reduced prices in a second term, so long as he doesn't blow it by attacking alterntiv
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