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Is President Donald Trump on track for a second term despite the opinion polls? A growing number of commentators think that Trump is going to repeat 2016 by confounding pundits’ certainties. Perhaps more tellingly, even the New York Times is stepping back from its wall-to-wall Trump Derangement to admit that the president has revitalised the US economy – a factor looming large in the minds of voters. Perhaps more so than the Chinese virus.
The president’s management of the pandemic is a prime reason many voters cite for backing his opponent. But [Bruce] Haines, who lives in a swing county in a swing state, is struck most by a different aspect of Trump’s record.
“I spent 35 years in the steel business, and I can tell you unfair trade deals were done by Republicans and Democrats,” Haines said. Both parties, he complained, had given up on manufacturing — once a wellspring of stable middle-class jobs. “Trump has been the saviour of American industry. He got it. He’s the only one.”
For three-and-a-half years, Trump oversaw a surging economy with record employment rates, especially for minorities. This was despite the endless frustration of dealing with Democrats, establishment Republicans and the Deep State undermining his presidency at every turn. It’s only been the impact of the Wuhan plague – or, more correctly, the panicked overreactions and disastrous incompetence of mostly Democrat governors and mayors – which punctured the Trumpian economy.
Still, despite one of the worst years in recent American history, the issue on which Trump gets his highest approval ratings remains the economy. It points to the resilience of his reputation as a savvy businessman and hard-nosed negotiator. And it is evidence that his most enduring economic legacy may not rest in any statistical almanac but in how much he has shifted the conversation around the economy.
For decades, coastal elites had championed the globalist ideology that benefited them while rusting out the heart of America. But, hey, who cared about the deplorables in flyover country?
Long before Trump appeared on the political stage, powerful forces were reshaping the economy and inciting deep-rooted anxieties about secure middle-income jobs and America’s economic preeminence in the world. Trump recognised, stoked and channelled those currents in ways that are likely to persist whether he wins or loses the election.
By ignoring economic and political orthodoxies, he at times successfully married seemingly contradictory or inconsistent positions to win over both hardcore capitalists and the working class. There would be large tax breaks and deregulation for business owners and investors, and trade protection and aid for manufacturers, miners and farmers.
In the process, he scrambled party positions on key issues like immigration and globalisation and helped topple sacred verities about government debt. He took a Republican Party that preached free trade, low spending and debt reduction and transformed it into one that picked trade wars even with allies, ran up record-level peacetime deficits and shielded critical social programs from cuts.
“He completely moved the Republican Party away from reducing Social Security and Medicare spending,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
While the Times tries its standard, deceitful gambit of conflating illegal and legal immigrants, they are still forced to eat an unappetising sandwich.
Even voters who don’t particularly like Trump credit him with re-energising the US economy.
Walter Dealtrey Jr., who runs a tyre service, sales and retreading business in Bethlehem that his father started 65 years ago, said he voted for Trump in 2016, but he was never a big fan of the president.
“He talks too much,” said Dealtrey, who’s been around long enough to distinguish a new Goodyear or Michelin tyre by its smell. “And his tone is terrible.” A year ago, he had considered the possibility of supporting a moderate Democrat like Biden or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
But with Election Day just over a week away, Dealtrey plans to once again support the president. Even after a few unnervingly slow months in the spring and some layoffs among the 960 people he employed at his company, Service Tire Truck Centers, he still trusts Trump on the economy.
Much, no doubt, to the shock and consternation of left-elite journalists who’ve finally deigned to venture beyond their coastal bubbles to find out what the rest of America thinks.
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