Thread: Trump: Give Me a Wall or I’ll Engineer a Recession

Trump: Give Me a Wall or I’ll Engineer a Recession

By Eric Levitz
10:47 A.M.

Donald Trump declared himself qualified for the world’s highest office in 2016, on the grounds that his exceptional deal-making acumen and economic expertise more than compensated for his lack of conventional credentials.

On Friday morning, the president tweeted that if Democrats refuse to fund his wall, he will engineer a massive recession (that would all-but ensure Democratic victory in 2020) – because he is under the impression that the United States would “profit” by closing its southern border to all commerce, since the U.S. runs trade deficit with Mexico:

We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with. Hard to believe there was a Congress & President who would approve!

The United States loses soooo much money on Trade with Mexico under NAFTA, over 75 Billion Dollars a year (not including Drug Money which would be many times that amount), that I would consider closing the Southern Border a “profit making operation.” We build a Wall or close the Southern Border. Bring our car industry back into the United States where it belongs. Go back to pre-NAFTA, before so many of our companies and jobs were so foolishly sent to Mexico. Either we build (finish) the Wall or we close the Border.

This is not the first time Trump has threatened to “close the border” if Congress defies his will. But until now, what the president meant by that phrase has been ambiguous. His latest tweets confirm that he has, in fact, been threatening to end (virtually) all commerce between the U.S. and Mexico, our nation’s third-largest trading partner. Upward of $30 billion worth of goods are shipped across the U.S. southern border on a monthly basis; interrupting that flow of goods for any significant period of time would paralyze major corporate supply chains, drive countless small businesses into insolvency, and terrorize global markets with the specter of American autarky.

Such a scheme would be so economically devastating — and politically suicidal — it is safe to assume that Trump’s threat is entirely empty. Or, at least, that is what investors appear to believe; hours after the president’s tweetstorm, the Dow and S&P 500 were both up in early trading.

And yet, “Trump would never do X because that would be stupid and politically counterproductive” isn’t the world’s most reliable heuristic. After all, the current (partial) government shutdown is itself the product of the president deciding that he could secure leverage over congressional Democrats by doing something stupid and politically counterproductive.

To review: Trump refused to support bipartisan legislation that would have kept the government open through the holiday season, in order to pressure Democrats into appropriating funds for his border wall. Which is to say, the president sabotaged the basic functioning of his own administration to draw attention to the fact that the Democratic Party does not support an extremely unpopular immigration policy, out of the ostensible belief that doing this would force Chuck Schumer to do his bidding immediately (instead of, say, waiting for Nancy Pelosi to collect the Speaker’s gavel next week).

This plan proved to be less than airtight. Recent polling shows that a large plurality of Americans blame Trump for the shutdown, and oppose his border wall. Meanwhile, the president’s approval rating in Morning Consult’s polling just dipped below 40 percent for the first time since he defended the “very fine” neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017.

Trump’s threat to “close the border” appears to be a desperate attempt to secure some kind of leverage over negotiating partners who show no signs of caving. And it is (arguably) true that the president could at least temporarily shutter the U.S.-Mexico border by invoking his national security powers, and that this would inflict some economic pain on Democratic constituencies. It is also true that Trump has unilateral authority to initiate a thermonuclear armageddon, and that Nancy Pelosi would probably prefer to fund a border wall than perish in an atomic holocaust.

But our president is the kind of demented nihilist who threatens to use his national security powers to inflict suffering on the American people, for the sake of narrow legislative gains — not the kind who would actually do so! Or, probably not, anyway!

And that is apparently enough to persuade congressional Republicans that they have no responsibility to remove a demented nihilist from the Oval Office.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/...recession.html

I posted this rubbish to show there is no way to win this.

Lets say sometime in late January or early February, there's finally some contorted agreement to give you $2.5 billion of "border security" that includes "fencing" or "wall" or "whatever you want to call it".

The Wall People won't be happy, they'll call you a coward for caving, they'll call you a liar for misleading them, and they'll accuse you of broken promises, because you promised a "great wall" of "concrete", not a steel fence.

The Republicans won't be happy, because you will have wasted tens of billions of taxpayer dollars with the shutdown, increasing deficits for nothing in return, to get $2.5 billion or less to build a steel wall that you could have built in your own words with the military budget and unspent funds.

The Independents won't be happy, because they won't know what to think, all they'll know is one of their family members or good friends who works for the government is struggling because they aren't getting their paychecks on time and they thought you were going to fix our country, not mess it up.

The Good Democrats who voted for you won't be happy, because they'll say, I thought he cared about workers, what kind of person who cares about workers wants to force someone to work without paying them on time over a budget dispute they have nothing to do with?

There is no way to win this. DemoQuacks don't care, they're off on their fancy holidays like all Obamaites laughing all the way. This was a terrible mistake. And the only way to fix it, is to end it.

I understand why House Republicans wanted to have their amendment and vote in the House to put on the record that they supported the Wall. That's done, their mission is accomplished. But when the Senate, predictable as the sun will rise and set every day didn't have the votes, it was over. You could give a good try over the weekend before Christmas to negotiate something, but by Sunday when no Senate was in town and all the House DemoQuacks were off on holiday, that left you alone at an empty negotiating table with no one to negotiate against, except yourself.

Now, the frustration over nothing for those who wrongly thought they were going to get something from this is leading to the desperation of "well, what about a DACA deal in exchange for the Wall funding" which no one who wants the Wall wants.

There's no way to win this on any level with anyone, and there never was. This is not a "fight", this is suicide.

Please stop it and end this lost cause now. Then get on a plane and head to Florida for New Years.

You were right to sign the CR and have the military build the wall. You should have stuck with that. Americans are tired of politics. They've listened to so much Fake News, they don't know what to think, so they're enjoying the new jobs you got them at the higher wages you got them with the higher after tax net income you got them in a peace approaching world you're getting them. They don't know or care about all the ins and outs of immigration control, they just know you'll do whatever you can to improve the situation and if one thing doesn't work, they know you'll try something else. What Americans want most is a smooth running common sense government that does its job for them, they want exactly what you have been doing even if they didn't think they would, even if they won't admit it to a pollster.

The shut-down is not part of that, it's opposite of that. It's like a giant wart on your administration, our country, and you, so get rid of this A to Z Loser, end it now, and implement Judy's Plan B. Sounds like that's where you're headed and that is a good place to go, a very good place to go, but don't drag the shutdown along with it, end the shutdown, and implement Judy's Plan B.

Win by ending birthright citizenship and cutting off all freebies including school and healthcare.

Enforce Public Charge Laws and start cleaning house and cutting them OFF the freebies.

E-verify jobs, housing, bank accounts, welfare, food stamps, drivers license, social security, IRS tax refunds, school and healthcare.

ALL government employees should be fired for awarding illegal aliens ANY government funded benefits including drivers licenses.

Employers get fined and jailed for 30 days. Second offense...bigger fine and jail 60 days. Third offense, jail 6 months and loose your business license.

OPERATION CRACK DOWN

NO TWO SETS OF RULES ALLOWING ILLEGAL ALIENS TO BREAK OUR LAWS OVER OTHERS COMING HERE LEGALLY!

BEEZER .
I SAID THE SAME THING OUR PRESIDENT SHOULD STOP EVERYTHING THEY WILL ALL GO HOME & THIS IS FOR ALL OTHER COUNTRY AS WELL WE PAY FOR EVERY THING & WE A KICK IN THE ASS .

Win or not, it was a fight that had to be had! Another outright cave by Trump would have further eroded his base of support and would have increased the odds against him in his 2020 run for reelection.