Continued from (1), (2), (3) and (4)
If Mr. If Trump adopted even partially the 900 pages of the "Mandate for the Leadership - The Conservative Promise", short name "Project 2025", prepared by the Heritage Foundation, we would have a coherent program in contrast to the bombastic and erratic statements that are common in Mr. Trump's political thought, supposing we could call that a thought.
The problem with what as I've already written about is that many of Project 2025's ideas are not popular, such as closing Medicare and Medicaid, banning pornography, imposing federal restrictions on abortion, repealing child labor protections, and authorizing the president to fire dozens of thousands of career federal employees and replace them with politically trusted appointees.
Let's look at some of Mr. Trump's grandest ideas. The massive deportation of illegal immigrants, whose number is estimated at 10 to 12 million and Mr. Trump inflates it to 15 to 20 million, is something that would take years and would require armies of civil servants and police officers and the collaboration of several governments, starting with Mexico because the majority of illegal immigrants are Mexicans. If mass deportation were to succeed, which is very problematic, the American economy would suddenly be devoid of essential labor.
If at the same time Mr. If Trump were to increase tariffs of the magnitude he announced, which he talks about as if they were to be borne by other countries and not by American consumers, the declines in domestic production could not be completely covered by imports without inflation, an inflation that precisely at the beginning of Mr. Biden's term in office has seriously damaged his popularity. JPMorgan Chase has estimated that a tariff increase half the size of what Trump is proposing would shave a third to a half percentage point off GDP growth in its first year and increase inflation by 1.5 to 2 percentage points.
All of this, assuming of course that a president who has the power to raise tariffs for reasons of national security or in response to the anti-competitive practices of others, could discretionarily increase them by 60% in the case of China and 20% in general without having to face dozens of lawsuits in court. In any case, retaliatory actions by the targeted countries would not fail to occur and damage American exports. Perhaps I should now remember that these policies were widely practiced between the two world wars and remember their results.
(To be continued)
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