Nobel prize winning economist and former MIT professor Paul Krugman sees tRump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown hobbling the country’s food production and home construction industries.
Wearing my professor’s hat, blocking imports of foreign-made goods and deporting foreign-born workers are, in some ways, similar in their economic implications. But tariffs are about dollars and cents; a crackdown on immigrants is about people. And because it’s about people, Trump’s hostility to immigrants is likely to do far more damage, humanitarian and even economic, than his trade policy.
Krugman says the ag industry will likely be the hardest hit. “Push those workers out, either by actual deportation or detention or simply by creating a climate of fear, and just watch what happens to grocery prices,” he wrote.
As tRump sycophants insist that tariffs are a negotiating measure, and that ICE will initially be targeting criminal undocumented immigrants, we are already seeing evidence of widespread fear and panic that will have major consequences, with workers staying home or, if they can, going back to their home countries, with businesses laying off valuable employees for fear that they may be raided.
Krugman also sees an uptick in vigilantism in the form of swatting, ratting out businesses believed to be full of undocumented workers, or those who look like migrants getting roughed up in public — remember when the Guardian Angels roughed up a “migrant” (actually a New Yorker) in Times Square? Expect to see much more of that.
Most of these workers are here legally, but overall unauthorized immigrants make up around 5 percent of the work force:
In the agriculture industry, the majority of workers are foreign born, and many of them are undocumented:
In the construction industry, about one quarter are foreign born, but hands-on tradesmen comprise about 31% of workers building homes and commercial buildings:
So while groceries and housing remain unaffordably high for many Americans, tRump’s tirades will hobble both industries.
...I don’t think he can dial it back. He can call off his tariffs, claiming to have won big concessions from Canada and Mexico, or grant tariff exemptions to his friends, turning them into one more instrument of corruption. But his screeds against immigrants have, I believed, unleashed forces of hatred that he can’t rein in. And these forces will make America poorer as well as uglier.
