Is there anything good to say about Donald Trump’s administration on the eve of the November 6th elections?
Short answer:
No. I must confess I’m bending backward in trying to answer this question. But, I can say the following, in trying to be honest with myself and with you and be as fair as possible with this man that we have in the White House:
Yes, there are a couple of things to which I give a reluctant but very limited endorsement. One, is the issue of trade, and the other is immigration.
Beyond these two issues I cannot find anything positive in Trump’s administration. I conclude below that he is a danger to America and to the world.
Longer answer:
Regarding trade with China
On this topic I endorse the direction of his thinking. I say “thinking” because, as you know, he is unable to explain anything intelligently. He can’t say more than 5 meaningful words about any idea or policy. So, I can only refer to the actions executed in his name by his top officials. Knowing, or guessing at the direction of his thinking, they assemble the facts, he nods in approval, barely reading a page or more of what they write, and they produce a Trump action or policy. I think that’s the way his administration is running.
His nod, in this case, recognizes that our trade relationship with China is not right. I agree. The Chinese governments makes demands of American companies wanting to do business there that our government generally does not require of foreign companies wanting to do business in the U.S. In some cases, our firms are prodded to share critically important internal information with local Chinese officials. Apple, Google and Amazon are cases at the top of an iceberg there.
This puts our American firms in jeopardy. The fact that the Chinese practice a form socialism is very much involved here, and that fact changes the playing field, but that’s a huge and separate topic. Chinese muscling American companies is unfair in any case. (Curiously, Mr. Trump hardly ever complains that almost everything we buy at the store is made in China.) There are many other one-sided situations that put our companies and our country against the wall there.
For those of you following these matters you may agree that Obama didn’t push very hard in trying to find a balanced relationship with the Chinese and Bush didn’t either.
So, what is my beef? Why do I give Mr. Trump a failing grade? The answer is that while I support his facing off with the Chinese about trade matters, his approach has been to throw the baby out with the bath water. To use a different metaphor, instead of fixing the house he is wrecking it with a giant backhoe. The tariffs (import taxes) he has ordered on Chinese goods arriving at our ports have the effect of a wrecking machine.
And, how have the Chinese answered? With more tariffs against things we sell to them, in other words, more wrecking machines. It’s the Hatfield’s versus the McCoys. Shoot them before they shoot you. Is that smart? Ask an American farmer about this and he’ll/she’ll tell you how they’re hurting.
If you’ve done some homework on Mr. Trump, you’ll agree with me that he is doing to the Chinese what he used to do when selling real estate in New York and New Jersey. He didn’t negotiate with his business partners, he’d try to cheat them or threaten to sue, or find ways not to pay his due if he didn’t get his way. He left a string of unpaid business partners and employees before campaigning for the presidency, and he paid only if a judge ordered it, settled quietly. That’s who the guy is. (See my book review, The Making of Donald Trump at https://carlosbgil.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/a-book-review-about-donald-trump/).
So, I give him an F for failure on trade with the Chinese even though I recognize he is looking in the right direction.
Regarding trade with Mexico
The other trade-related comment has to do with NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. We’ve had this pact with Mexico and Canada since 1994. Mr. Trump swore up and down he was going to tear it up because it was “worst trade deal the U.S. ever signed.” Now that the negotiations are done we discover he didn’t tear up anything, but claims he has. Lying and posturing is what he does. The truth is that his trade officials badgered Mexico and Canada to sweeten the agreement a bit, but not much.
We now have a NAFTA 2.0. The biggest changes have to do with all those cars we buy, made in Mexico and Canada–that they will now have more parts made in the three countries than before, 75% up from 62.5%. Another big change is that workers, mostly Americans, will begin earning $16 an hour beginning 5 years from now, but only some of them, less than half. Five years from now, did you get that? So, big deal. Amazon is paying employees $15 an hour now. American NAFTA 2.0 workers will have to wait five years to get a raise! And, NAFTA products and merchandise will cost us more money too.
So, has Mr. Trump resolved the “worst ever trade deal?” Of course not. He deserves an F for failure here too and a U for unsatisfactory in lying about it. That’s what I give him, and you should too.
Regarding immigration.
Here, again, as I read and hear about the “Central American caravan,” I bend over backwards in trying to assess this issue as honestly as possible. I theorize that when he decided to run for office, Mr. Trump discovered that our immigration program needed major repairs, but only then. Even so, I agree that it needs major work; I’ve been saying as much for a long time.
However, I am convinced that when he discovered immigration to be a hot button issue he also decided he would handle it in a red neck fashion in order to gain voter support. And, he did, and he got it. Bless our blind-sided folks, right?
You know the dismal story about Trump’s views of immigrants and immigration. Referring to people like us, and the people we’ve known all our lives in San Fernando CA, where I grew up, he called us “drug traffickers” and “rapists,” and has refused to explain or apologize so far. He doubted the efficacy of a Mexican American judge who made a decision that he didn’t like, just because the judge was Mexican American—like me! My daughter is a judge! He may as well have said that about her too! That made me so angry!
His comments about Muslims and Muslims immigrants to the U.S. tell us that he doggedly refuses to separate the few bad ones from the rest. His comments about Africans and Africa reveal his crude and abysmal ignorance of that part of the world. The fact is that all Americans of color are suspect in his juvenile brain. He is a bigot.
Our immigration program (the sum of all our immigration policies) needs fixing, for sure. Having to witness the “Central American caravan,” plodding northward as I write these words, underlines this fact. (By the way, Mexico has prevented more non-documented northward crossings than we have.) There is no doubt that our country possesses the right to control its borders, like all other countries. But, the men and women who are responsible for our immigration policies, including Mr. Trump, insist on overlooking the fact that migrants from Mexico and Central America (the biggest portion of Latin American immigrants at this time) come for jobs, primarily. They are economic migrants, for the most part. They want a better economic life, like my ancestors did, and possibly yours too. They come here because our economy attracts them, like bits of metal to a gigantic magnet and this means nothing to our government leaders. This magnetic attraction has been going on for a hundred years.
If we had recognized the economic pull decades ago and assisted Central American leaders in the creation of more jobs there, we wouldn’t have to be fretting about these Central Americans knocking at our southern door today. Have we addressed this option in a forceful and intelligent manner? No, we haven’t. The fact that Mexican illegal immigration has diminished to historic lows while Mexico’s economy has grown, is testimony to what I’m saying.
Instead of helping El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras strengthen their economies in order to create more jobs and assist them in the way the govern their countries, we’ve directed most of our efforts at the eradication of illegal drugs. It hasn’t worked a bit; money misspent.
Migrants crossing our southern border have gained more attention lately because drug gangs have taken advantage of many of them, forcing some of them to transport drugs into the U.S. While recognizing that there is a whole lot more to say about this, I cut to the core directly:
It is our demand for marijuana, methamphetamines, cocaine and other such drugs that lies at the bottom of this Trumpian scare about immigrants posing as security threats. Drug gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are endangering ordinary citizens there and further corrupting local government officials with the piles of cash they get from selling drugs to us, and now to their own people. What has Mr. Trump said about this? Besides flashing the idea of a death penalty for drug traffickers. He’s said nothing.
So, what are his flagship answers to fixing our immigration program?
Build a wall! Bar all Muslims! Separate immigrant children from their parents at the border to stop the flow of Central Americans! These simple-Simon proposals further show his incompetent leadership.
So, I give Mr. Trump an absolute failure for the way he has handled our immigration problem.
Other reasons why Mr. Trump is a total failure:
- Russian interference in our 2016 elections: everything indicates that he accepted, at the least, their interference placing him a hairline away from treasonous; illegitimate in my view;
- Global warming: he refuses to accept that our Mother Earth is being choked by industrial fumes. He doesn’t care that these gases are causing us to endure ever increasing wild weather, like the more recent hurricanes, and the end of many forms of animal and plant life. How to understand this colossal disregard? He’s not a reader to begin with, and he is protecting his business supporters who stand to lose money with earth-friendly policies;
- Good health for Americans. Mr. Trump does not seem to care that far too many Americans, especially those who support him (can you believe this?) lack health insurance and they lack health care (something he’s never been without) . He tried to kill President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, but Americans have fought back because healthcare is important for them and it appears Mr. Trump can’t stop them.
- Hatred for woman. He has no qualms in disrespecting women, all the way from Hillary Clinton to Stormy Daniels and now it’ll be Senator Elizabeth Warren. Has he ever talked about his mother? She must have done something to him to make him a misogynist when he was a child.
- Disregard for NATO and our most important allies. Being the ignoramus that he is, he has brushed aside our vital relationships with Europe. He ignores their past internal wars and Russia’s expansionary designs on them. Mr. Trump is weakening the peace-oriented system we helped build after World War II.
- Safe and honest college education for young Americans. Mr. Trump’s education secretary has been looking for ways to protect the fake universities that cheated many young Americans. Trump University is the best example of the fraudulent institutions that preyed on American families eager to higher-educate their children. Let us not forget that he paid $25 million to keep Trump University details from being exposed in court. What shame!
- The list of Trump’s incompetent and disastrous decisions is long. Don’t you get it by now? He’s a danger to America and to the world.
