“You ran up mountains of debt, as well as losses, using other people’s money, and you were forced to file for bankruptcy not once, not twice, four times.”
Carly Fiorina to Donald Trump
You may think that having a billionaire as president is a good thing, since he must understand how to manage money.
But what about a billionaire who has declared bankruptcy four times? Given that the U.S. is $19 trillion in debt (and that’s just federal debt), maybe it’s a good idea to elect Donald Trump president. His first act in office can be to declare the U.S. bankrupt and get us out of paying off all of that debt. 
To be fair, Mr. Trump’s bankruptcies were not Chapter 7 bankruptcies, in which anything of value is typically liquidated, leaving creditors with pennies on the dollar. They were Chapter 11 bankruptcies, in which a restructuring takes place.
But creditors still lose plenty in such cases. So you may interpret the bankruptcies to mean that Mr. Trump took advantage of other people to enrich himself, which would make him unethical. Or you may interpret them to mean that Mr. Trump is incompetent.
Maybe, given his tendency to borrow more than he needs at very high interest rates, both answers are correct. At least National Review makes The Donald seem neither ethical nor competent:
“Trump’s first bankruptcy was in 1991 after he borrowed a stupidly irresponsible amount of money to finance that monument to excruciatingly bad taste known as the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Trump is such a good manager that the casino’s slot machines began failing during its first week of business. Never one to let reality stand in the way of his confidence, Trump had financed the $1 billion project largely with junk bonds, which meant very high interest payments. Trump did not make enough money to meet his interest payment and so was forced into bankruptcy.”
Of course, if it’s a matter of ethics, it’s all relative. With Hillary Clinton, it’s impossible to keep up with the ethical lapses, which include playing loose with classified information on her private server, whatever happened in Benghazi, Whitewater, the travel office controversy, the suicide of Vince Foster, her remarkable trading gains from cattle futures and the appropriately named Clinton Foundation, a charity that has been most charitable to the Clintons. The New York Post noted that, “The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid. … with the fattest payouts going to family friends.”
But enough about the Clintons. We include the above to pose the question, “Is Donald Trump more ethical than Hillary Clinton?” The answer, of course, is “Yes.” But that answer would apply to practically anyone except Bernie Madoff.
We also bring it up to note that The Donald is among the foundation’s donors.
China and Immigrants
So back to The Donald, as there are serious issues to discuss. While he has been short on policy statements to date, two that stand out are his suggestion of a 45% tax on goods imported from China and his desire to limit immigration by, among other things, building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico that Mexico would allegedly pay for. Pope Francis said the wall idea is “not Christian,” although keep in mind that the pope seems to think that Marxism, which considers religion “the opiate of the masses,” is OK.
So let’s consider these two issues.
The China tax. As Forbes put it, a 45% tariff on goods imported from China “is not just abject populism, but also somewhere between foolish and insane as a piece of economic policy.”
Why? One reason is that when you pick a fight with a country that has an $11 trillion economy, the other country is likely to fight back. The U.S., with a population of 318 million, has more to lose than China, with a population of 1.35 billion.
Protectionist policies never end well and cause tremendous economic damage. The Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, for example, played a major role in the Great Depression. The unemployment rate nearly doubled after the tariffs created by Smoot Hawley were enacted. Given that today’s economy is more global than the Depression-era economy, the impact of a trade war could be even greater.
It’s true that the U.S. has a large and growing trade deficit with China. China imported U.S. goods valued at $121 billion for the year ending in July 2015, while the U.S. imported $480 billion in Chinese goods for the same period.
While the Chinese government is partially to blame for the imbalance, it’s important to note that U.S. goods are relatively far less affordable to Chinese consumers than Chinese goods are to U.S. consumers. U.S. consumers save money when they buy relatively low priced Chinese goods. Chinese consumers can buy locally made goods at a lower price. But there are, as noted, many, many Chinese consumers that American companies would like to reach – especially as their standard of living continues to improve.
The China trade problem has been exacerbated by central bankers. The Federal Reserve Board’s quantitative easing program kept the dollar weak for years, but that program has ended and other central banks, including China’s, have initiated similar programs, so now the dollar is relatively strong. As a result, American goods are even more expensive for foreign consumers.
A better approach than placing a tariff on Chinese goods would be to enable U.S. goods to be priced more competitively by reforming the U.S. tax code. Trump has proposed tax reform, but his reform ideas have received far less attention than his proposed tariff on China.
Immigration. There is no doubt that U.S. immigration regulations are in need of reform. The number of illegal aliens living in the U.S. is difficult to document and may be as high as 20 million, but the Pew Research Center estimates the number at 11.3 million, a drop of nearly a million from 2005.
As The Donald explains it on his website, “U.S. taxpayers have been asked to pick up hundreds of billions in healthcare costs, housing costs, education costs, welfare costs, etc. Indeed, the annual cost of free tax credits alone paid to illegal immigrants quadrupled to $4.2 billion in 2011. The effects on jobseekers have also been disastrous, and black Americans have been particularly harmed.”
OK. Illegal immigration is a problem, but the logistics of identifying and exporting up to 20 million people are mind boggling. And Mr. Trump is not going to get Mexico to pay for identifying and exporting them. If he could, it would leave millions of jobs open that Americans typically don’t want. We’ve created an entitlement system that provides an incentive for Americans who receive entitlements to continue receiving them. Why would they instead pick fruit for wages they could barely survive on?
By all means, export those illegals who come to America to break laws and sell drugs. Laws must be obeyed, but it would also make sense to find a way for decent, hard-working illegal immigrants to become legal immigrants. They broke the law, but if you lived in Mexico, wouldn’t you do whatever it takes to come work in the United States?
A bigger issue that’s barely addressed is that America needs more immigrants. With America’s 77 million baby boomers reaching retirement age, the ratio of taxpayers contributing to Social Security is dropping and the number of retirees collecting Social Security is increasing. Half of America pays no taxes and the system is going to go bankrupt if nothing is done to save it.
We also have an immigration system that doesn’t allow foreign students to remain in America after they graduate. So we have the best and brightest students come to the U.S. for their technical and business degrees, then we tell them they can’t stay here. They have to go start their businesses elsewhere. Does that make sense?
But what about the wall? President Reagan succeeded in having the Berlin Wall, also known as the Iron Curtain, torn down. Would President Trump succeed in having the Mexican Wall built?
He suggests that Mexico “must pay for the wall and, until they do, the United States will, among other things: impound all remittance payments derived from illegal wages; increase fees on all temporary visas issued to Mexican CEOs and diplomats (and if necessary cancel them); increase fees on all border crossing cards – of which we issue about 1 million to Mexican nationals each year (a major source of visa overstays); increase fees on all NAFTA worker visas from Mexico (another major source of overstays); and increase fees at ports of entry to the United States from Mexico [Tariffs and foreign aid cuts are also options].”
Even if a wall is built, will it keep Mexican immigrants and others coming through Mexico from entering the U.S.? Even with the beefed-up border patrol Trump is calling for, those who want to come to the United States will still find a way.
America is still the land of the free, albeit less free than it used to be.
Many Americans find his say-anything personality refreshing, especially in contrast to the scripted responses of other presidential candidates, but Donald Trump’s policies are too firmly rooted in the art of the unreal.