If Trump Isn't Insulting Clinton, He's Not Winning

If Trump Isn't Insulting Clinton, He's Not Winning
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Describing presidential debates, the great George Will once observed that they're "about as satisfying as a completed sneeze." Tuesday night's faceoff between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was something quite a bit less. The only satisfaction any halfway sentient human could reasonably mine from their tangle is that neither Clinton nor Trump will have any kind of mandate come January 2017. Thank goodness.

Up front, Clinton won. No insight there. If Trump isn't constantly insulting his debate opponent(s) in grand style, he's losing. Worse, he's quite simply a bore when not being offensive. It's assumed by those who should know better that Trump's rise represents a change in the make-up of the GOP, and in the views of the electorate more broadly. Let's be serious. Trump copycats have lost everywhere this election season. Trump's appeal (at least in the Republican primaries) was always that he was somewhat interesting, that he represented great television drama, and that he could shrink his opponents with sometimes funny putdowns. In an effort to appear serious and perhaps more regal Trump revealed himself as painfully repetitive, insipid, and desert-level shallow when it came to policy knowledge.

The above helped Clinton because when it comes to her expressed economic views, she's hopeless too. With Clinton it's always the same. Platitudes about "good jobs" and "rising incomes," and "an economy that works for everyone, not just those on top." The problem is that good, well-paid jobs always and everywhere result from investment. No economic school of thought can get around the latter. In that case, the single best way to achieve good jobs that pay well is by - yes - making sure the economy works for the rich by reducing or removing the production barriers placed in front of them. By virtue of being "rich" they have disposable income that they can put to work. When they do, good jobs at good pay are the tautological outcome.

With the money of others ("money of others" and "Clinton" a redundancy) Clinton also promised a higher minimum wage, more paid leave, more family leave, etc. Missed by the Democratic nominee is that higher pay and workplace perks can't be decreed. Yet they're possible. But these things are generally only possible at corporations in which the CEOs and top executives are earning millions at the same time that their owners (rich investors) are earning billions. It's bad enough that Clinton is a redistributionist, and then it's sad she can't see that everything she wants economically is a function of an economy that works best for "those on top."

The shame was that the businessman in Trump didn't expose his opponent's confusion with an explanation of business basics. Instead, Trump proceeded to reveal himself as possibly even more economically misinformed than his opponent. There were the obvious falsehoods about how China's monetary authorities have been devaluing the currency when in fact it's risen quite a bit against the dollar since 2005. Trump's China fib revealed bigger misunderstandings within the New Yorker not just about the horrors of currency devaluations (he thinks they're a positive sign of a country gaining advantage), but also about the purpose of work in the first place. To put it simply, the sole reason we work is so that we can "import" from across the street and around the world all that we don't have. To import is the purpose of our work. The more we work productively, the more we can import. Abundant imports signal great wealth.

Yet none of the above has registered with Trump. Seemingly convinced we're still in the 1980s when Japan was allegedly "stealing" jobs from us, Trump is using China and Mexico as props to show us how little he knows about trade, and by extension, basic economics. Throughout the debate Trump kept repeating the childish falsehood that China and Mexico are "stealing our jobs" and that they're building their economies by - gasp - exporting to us. Trump was at least right about the latter, only for him to draw the exactly wrong conclusion. Trump decries imports as a signal of our economic decline, yet that simply tells us he hasn't spent much time in poor countries. Imports are scarce in countries that are being "crushed" economically.

But this being Trump, he repeated over and over again what a disaster NAFTA was, how poorly negotiated trade deals have given us record "trade deficits," along with the constant assertion that the U.S. is in "serious trouble." Can we at least try to be serious? For one, countries don't trade. Consenting individuals trade. We have "trade deficits" that allow us to import more product than we export only because global demand for the shares of U.S. companies (and our export of same) don't count in these worthless trade calculations. Only to Trump could abundant foreign investment be a sign of economic weakness. Lastly, never in the history of mankind has a country been in "serious trouble" at the same time that the world's most productive were fighting desperately for market share in that country.

Sorry, but Trump can't have it both ways. If trade is in fact war as he presumes, and if our alleged enemies in China and Mexico are truly stealing our jobs, then it would certainly be the case that they would not be exporting to us. Indeed, what producer would export to a country in which people weren't working? Sadly, neither Clinton nor debate host Lester Holt challenged Trump on his many foolish economic assertions. Holt didn't challenge Clinton either.

Trump apologists who should know better talk up his huge tax-cut proposals, and while laudable, they ignore that Trump wants to seriously raise taxes on the American people through massive spending increases on infrastructure, tariffs on foreign goods, and a devaluation of the very currency (the dollar) that Americans exchange for all that they don't have. Missed by Trump partisans is that corporate, capital gains and individual rates of taxation are but a few of the many ways in which government can overtax us. What Trump proposes to give in tax cuts he also proposes to take back in economy-sapping fashion. Economic policy is not his strong suit. Neither is it Clinton's. Again, thank goodness for the separation of powers that is codified in our Constitution.

Trump had another chance to embarrass Clinton when she critiqued his business acumen with comments about bankruptcies and his stiffing of former contractors. Trump's weak responses raised a question about the people advising him. Were they more economically attuned themselves they would have programmed Trump to reply with something along the lines of "I'm an entrepreneur. I'm often doing what no one has done before when I develop real estate and start businesses. I've taken many risks over the years, and some of them didn't work. This is what we businessmen and women do. My opponent knows nothing about this. Her immense wealth has never involved risk-taking or profits and losses, but instead has had everything to do with her and her husband's ability to influence how a $4 trillion dollar government spends the money of the American taxpayer. Naturally my opponent has never had a business failure, and naturally she can't understand what I do. She can't because her wealth is solely a function of fleecing all of you."

Rather than wipe the floor with Clinton, Trump meekly dissembled about how his employees love him, and that his bankruptcies were just him taking advantage of esoteric tax law. Can anyone play this game? Trump at least used to be able to. The man who perfected the put down on the way to shrinking his opponents was himself shrunk in the debate. By Hillary Clinton.

Clinton won given the simple truth that Trump is not winning unless he's insulting his opponent. As for the failed attempts last night to make Trump appear presidential, it's not happening. Not even close. Trump is not just a bore when he tries to appear serious, he also comes off as clueless. Indeed, the worst thing about the debate for Trump was the two minutes allotted to each for every question posed by Holt. Trump's knowledge of any policy subject couldn't fill up ten seconds. Trying to go against type by not insulting Clinton with great constancy, Trump talked policy. And talked. And repeated himself over and over again without making any coherent points. Many have pointed this out, but Trump is the know-nothing friend or relative who, having recently discovered an interest in policy, has decided that interest and knowledge are one and the same. The result was that Trump talked and talked in the debate; every word revealing for all to see just how little he knows. The Trump partisans who claimed similarities between him and Ronald Reagan should hang their heads in shame. Reagan's favorite thinker was Fredric Bastiat. Does anyone think Trump's ever heard of the 19th century French political economist?

So yes, Trump lost last night and he lost big. Try as they might, Trump's handlers can't make him look or act presidential. What they miss is that they shouldn't try. When Trump tries to appear presidential it means he's talking policy; meaning he looks foolish.  That's like Hillary Clinton talking about real estate development. As little as she knows about economic policy, Clinton knows even less about real estate. With Trump, his knowledge of public policy is on par with Clinton's on real estate. He knows not of what he speaks as the debate revealed in living color. Unless Trump is willing to insult Clinton, and keep the campaign light and fun, he'll lose.

Much like the football coach who thinks only bad outcomes can result from passing the ball, in Trump's case he's always losing when he's talking policy. This is true even when his proposals (tax cuts) are good. Donald Trump needs to fire up the insults, and quickly. Absent that, Hillary Clinton has this game won. "To thine own self be true" should be plastered on the wall of the walls of Trump headquarters in the way that "It's the economy, stupid," informed the victorious presidential campaign of the husband of Trump's opponent.

 

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks, and a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research and Trading (www.trtadvisors.com). He's the author of Who Needs the Fed? (Encounter Books, 2016), along with Popular Economics (Regnery, 2015).  His next book, set for release in May of 2018, is titled The End of Work (Regnery).  It chronicles the exciting explosion of remunerative jobs that don't feel at all like work.  

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