My wife, Annie, and I just spent a couple of weeks in Europe. Virtually every European we met asked us incredulously, “are we looking at a President Trump?”This was particularly true in Great Britain which recently debated keeping him out of the country because he is a purveyor of hatred. Returning home we were confronted with headlines that suggested the possibility that Trump could pick up some Bernie Sanders supporters because both men are “anti-establishment” and oppose “bad” trade deals that cost American jobs.
This prospect scares me. I do not want to argue about whether Bernie Sanders supporters should vote for Hillary Clinton or work for her election. Instead, I want to ask if there really are Sanders supporters willing to vote for Trump should Sanders fails to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination. I have seen the on-line pledge “Bernie or Bust” and read comments by Sanders supporters that Clinton is part of the problem not the solution because of her long ties to the political establishment, her support for policies that privilege the one percent and her hawkishness which translates into support for militarism. But do those criticisms of Clinton really justify supporting the election of Donald Trump to be the next President?
Look, I get it. My book on the US economy is entitled SURRENDER, HOW THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION COMPLETED THE REAGAN REVOLUTION. (University of Michigan Press, 2000) If I were to write a sequel it would probably be focused on the failure of the Obama Administration to seize the moment at the beginning of his first term and introduce a New New Deal emulating what Franklin Roosevelt did in the 1930s. I agree with the criticisms that the Obama Administration Justice Department did a terrible disservice by failing to prosecute the bankers who perpetrated the mortgage fraud epidemic that caused the financial meltdown.
I also get the fact that when you listen to Trump, you will hear him sounding a bit like Bernie Sanders when he criticizes trade deals and the loss of manufacturing jobs over the last 16 years. Make no mistake about it: unbalanced trade in manufactures has cost US jobs. The Economic Policy Institute analyzed the loss of manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2014 and found that over 2/3 of the decline was caused by a rising trade deficit in manufactured goods.
[For details, see Robert E. Scott “Manufacturing Job LossTrade, Not Productivity, Is the Culprit” Economic Policy Institute, August 11, 2015 ]
But most of the loss in manufacturing jobs have not been caused by trade deals. The data show that despite NAFTA which was passed in 1993, US manufacturing employment did not start falling until the 2000 recession. The main culprit is the high international value of the dollar. Trump and Sanders both decry Chinese currency manipulation and there is no question that between 2000 and 2005, the Chinese Central Bank virtually pegged the value of the Chinese currency at 8.28 yuan per dollar. Nevertheless, as economist Dean Baker has noted many times, the key to the high international value of the dollar are decisions made initially by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to pursue a “high dollar” policy in the 1990s, combined with a decision by many foreign central banks to build up a large volume of dollar reserves in order to insulate themselves from the pressures that caused many Asian countries to experience a the financial crisis in 1997.
[For details of both the history and the analysis see Dean Baker, “The Trade Deficit: The Biggest Obstacle to Full Employment,” Center for Economic Policy Research, April 2, 2014 ]
Thus, the problem of our trade deficit is complicated and tariffs and “better deals” are not the way to fix it.
In any event, despite the superficial resemblances between Trump’s and Sanders’ trade policies, if you probe deeper you find that Trump is the antithesis of what every Sanders supporter is for. Anyone can talk a good game. Trump says he will negotiate better trade deals. He attacks China for taking advantage of the US. But what is his actual record? He buys his own lines of apparel (and apparently his daughter Ivanka’s as well) from China and other low wage countries. He claims that when he’s President he will threaten to impose a 35% tariff on companies like Ford or Carrier which move plants overseas, yet he himself could arrange to have his and his daughter’s clothing lines made in the US. Yes, prices would rise and he might find his profits squeezed, but that would be the case if he successfully forced Ford or Carrier to keep high cost manufacturing in the US. (And let us remember, he would have to get Congress to go along with that 35% tariff and deal with the fallout when China and other countries affected by the new tariff retaliate. Tariff increases are usually responded to – that is what happened during the 1930s when countries tried to in effect export their unemployment by raising trade barriers. His rise in tariffs might save some manufacturing jobs but it would lose a lot of jobs in export industries.)
In fact, the unemployment problem cannot be solved by trade policy alone. Bernie Sanders would take a big step towards creating good jobs first and foremost with a big increase in infrastructure investment. Trump has taken no position on infrastructure investment though he routinely promises to cut all government spending except for defense. Sanders wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Trump opposes that, claiming wages are already too high.
[Just the day before I recorded this commentary, Trump changed his tune saying he was “open” to raising the minimum wage. He also argued that when he said “wages are too high” he was talking about the reason we CANNOT raise the minimum wage. In other words, we have no idea what he believes because – in fact – he doesn’t believe anything except that he’s very smart, very strong and would make America great again. By the way, when asked when America was last “great” he said it was when Ronald Reagan was President. During the Reagan 8 years unemployment averaged higher than in any eight year period before and higher than the next 19 years. Reagan was also President when hundreds of marines were killed by a suicide bomber in Lebanon. Reagan responded by withdrawing all the rest of the marines from Lebanon.)
Perhaps the most serious difference between Sanders and Trump is in their actual policies towards working people. Trump claims to be the champion of workers, yet he has resisted unionization of his Las Vegas casino, even though many of his competitors on the strip are unionized. Sanders, on the other hand, has a long history of support for unions, exemplified by his turning up on Verizon workers’ picket lines recently.
Any Sanders supporter who would consider voting for Trump has clearly not studied Trump sufficiently. I consider him a fascist and no friend of workers. White men who think Trump will only bully Mexican immigrants, Muslims and women while protecting their jobs will be very surprised when he reveals himself as an equal opportunity oppressor.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author (with Howard Sherman) of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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