COLUMBIA, S.C. — Donald Trump has won over many working class Americans with his populist message, reflected in his large and consistent lead in the polls. One might expect his rivals to be targeting this large bloc of voters, but for the most part they aren’t even attempting to compete for them.
Much of Trump’s support comes from men and women who feel left behind, economically and culturally. Economically, they blame trade deals and immigration for the collapse of job markets in manufacturing and industrial towns. Culturally, they feel looked down on by elites, who live vastly different lives.
Trump, with both his policy positions and his attitude, has promised to restore the fortunes of these voters. He has said he would impose tariffs as high as 45 percent on Chinese goods that undercut U.S. manufacturers — though he’s recently tried to back away from that position — and has famously promised to deport all of the 12 million or so undocumented immigrants in the country.
It’s widely agreed upon that tariffs would eliminate American jobs of companies that export goods to China, and would drive up the cost of goods for low- and middle-income Americans who shop at Wal-Mart, Target or Amazon, major retailers that are stocked with a steady flow of cheap imports from other countries like China, where labor costs are far less for manufacturers. And in fact, manufacturing job losses over the last decade or so are due more to efficiency gains from increased use of robots, rather than cheaper labor overseas.
Yet none of Trump’s rivals are emphasizing that point. Occasionally, one of them has said, as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush did at a debate in mid-January, that a massive tariff would be result in “higher prices for consumers” and would be “devastating for the economy.” Rubio said in that same debate, in Charleston, that “if you send a tie or a shirt made in China into the United States and an American goes to buy it at the store and there’s a tariff on it, it gets passed on in the price to price to the consumer.”
However, no one is focusing on this argument, either with paid ads or repeated emphasis on the campaign trail.
Neither are they hammering Trump for saying he will make no changes to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which are the biggest long term drivers of the U.S. government’s $19 trillion national debt. If the debt continues to grow unchecked, it will hurt economic growth as well as eat up more and more of the federal budget, leaving less money for other spending.
Trade is a thorny issue. Although U.S. participation in the global economy has clearly benefitted the country as a whole over the past few decades, it has also been a period of deep disruption and loss for many Americans, whether or not it’s due to robots or cheap Chinese labor. Any argument for trade must acknowledge this, and that’s an uncomfortable proposition for a politician under the white hot lights of the presidential primary.
In addition, while Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and John Kasich are all politicians and thus not above pandering, the idea of promising the return of manufacturing jobs en masse is too far fetched for them to promise. And so they are left with the prospect of telling bewildered blue collar workers that the government can help them transition into a new economy.
But by ignoring the issue, they are ceding the argument to Trump. And while each of them talk with some frequency about the struggles of every day Americans, none of them are going out of their way stylistically at events to speak directly to working class voters and to promise dramatic action to help blue collar and working class Americans.
“We need to take our message to people who are living paycheck to paycheck,” Rubio said Friday at a rally in Columbia.
By Jon Ward.
Culled from Yahoo News.
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