The Trump Economic Fantasy Is Unraveling

The Felon continues to claim that the USA's economy is doing well now that he and his regime of mediocrity and sycophants are in charge.  The actual economic data suggests otherwise - job creation is down, unemployment is up, inflation is up and the tourism, agriculture and construction industries are hurting due to the ICE raids driving away migrant workers and farmers are in many cases on the verge of bankruptcy as the Felon's tariffs have cause crop purchasers to make purchases from other, more friendly countries. Worse yet, with the regime's efforts to censor anyone saying things not to the Trumpenfuhrer's liking the regime is demanding that all of us engage in an "the emperor has no clothes" fantasy that all is not only well, but that the Felon's leadership is nothing short of brilliant. The big question is one of how bad does the economy have to get before MAGA world realizes that it was pitched a fantasy that simply does not exist. Meanwhile, others who have not drunk the MAGA Kool-Aid (yours truly included) are questioning how much longer it will be safe to remain in the USA.  A column in the New York Times looks at how the Felon's economic fantasy world is unraveling.  Here are column highlights:

The essence of President Trump’s pitch to the American people last year was simple: They could have it both ways.

They could have a powerful, revitalized economy and “mass deportations now.” They could build new factories and take manufacturing jobs back from foreign competitors as well as expel every person who, in their view, didn’t belong in the United States. They could live in a “golden age” of plenty — and seal it away from others outside the country with a closed, hardened border.

Trump told Americans that there were no trade-offs. As the saying goes, they could have their cake and eat it, too.

In reality, this was a fantasy. Americans could have a strong, growing economy, which requires immigration to bring in new people and fill demand for labor, or they could finance a deportation force and close the border to everyone but a small, select few. It was a binary choice. Theirs could be an open society or a closed one, but there was no way to get the benefits of the former with the methods of the latter.

Millions of Americans embraced the fantasy. Now, about eight months into Trump’s second term, the reality of the situation is inescapable. As promised, Trump launched a campaign of mass deportation. Our cities are crawling with masked federal agents, snatching anyone who looks “illegal” to them — a bit of racial profiling that has, for now, been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. The jobs, however, haven’t arrived. There are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in 2024, thanks in part to the president’s tariffs and, well, his immigration policies.

We got a vivid glimpse of what it looks like for harsh immigration policies to undermine growth and investment earlier this month, in Georgia, when immigration officials detained hundreds of South Korean nationals working at a battery plant in a small town outside Savannah. On Sept. 4, a large detachment of federal, state and local law enforcement descended on an electric vehicle battery plant operated by Hyundai and LG Electronics. The raid, which the administration described as one of the largest-ever single-location enforcement operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, was aimed at just four people. Officials detained nearly 500, the large majority of whom were South Korean workers brought to the plant to assist with its construction. The workers, who were held for more than a week, described terrible conditions.

“Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink,” The Hankyoreh, a daily newspaper in South Korea reported. “The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours.”

The consequences of this raid go beyond the trauma inflicted on the workers. The South Korean public is furious, not the least because this raid came just weeks after the country’s government promised to pour billions of dollars into new investments in the United States. “If U.S. authorities detain hundreds of Koreans in this manner, almost like a military operation, how can South Korean companies investing in the U.S. continue to invest properly in the future?” Cho Jeongsik, a lawmaker from the liberal governing Democratic Party, asked. . . . . One assumes that other countries are taking note and may adjust their plans in response to Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Beyond this raid, we can see the economic consequences of the president’s immigration policies on workforces across the country. In states with large numbers of undocumented immigrants, the construction, agricultural and hospitality sectors have seen a decline in growth this year, according to a recent report from the Economic Insights and Research Consulting group. The Congressional Budget Office warned last week that the U.S. population is projected to grow slower than expected — and potentially even contract — as a result of deportations and other anti-immigration policies. The result could be higher inflation and lower economic growth in the near future.

We could also discuss the way that the president’s singular focus on intimidating, harassing and removing immigrants has threatened the livelihoods of countless thousands of America’s farmers, many of whom backed the president in the last election. “People don’t understand that if we don’t get more labor, our cows don’t get milked and our crops don’t get picked,” one Pennsylvania dairy farmer and three-time Trump supporter told Politico.

When you combine the president’s immigration policies with his large and unpredictable tariffs on imported goods — a move that has choked off an important avenue for economic growth — you have an approach almost guaranteed to induce stagflation. Some experts see exactly that on the horizon.

None of this comes as a surprise. It is what you should expect from an agenda that simultaneously seeks to close the doors to newcomers, toss out a large number of productive workers and impose a new mercantilist order on the world. Trump told voters that they could indulge their resentments and still walk away richer and more prosperous. But they can’t. To embrace nativism in a global, connected economic world is to sacrifice prosperity for the sake of exclusion, just as the main effect of racial segregation in the American South was to leave the region impoverished and underdeveloped.

It’s hard to imagine that Trump cares much whether or not his promises work out for the people who believed them, to say nothing of the nation at large. He already has what he wants: freedom from accountability for a lifetime of lawbreaking and an easy way to line his pockets. The American people may not profit from his presidency, but he will. Indeed, he already has.