Ask Donald Trump what he’ll do about any of the nation’s economic problems and he’ll give you one of three answers. He’ll either promise to cut taxes, raise tariffs or deport millions of people. When asked about child care, for example, Trump told the Economic Club of New York that he would raise “trillions” of dollars from new tariffs on virtually every good imported into the United States.
This, of course, shows a fundamental ignorance of how tariffs work as well as the probable impact of a high-tariff regime on most American consumers. (The short story is that, if passed into law, Trump’s tariffs would amount to a large tax hike on most working Americans.) It’s also just not an answer. But that’s normal for the former president.
On Friday, toward the end of a news conference where he attacked E. Jean Carroll — the former journalist who sued Trump, successfully, for damages relating to sexual abuse — Trump told his audience that he would discuss the latest jobs numbers. What followed was a brief rant about “foreigners coming in illegally” who “took the jobs of native-born Americans.”
“And I’ve been telling you that’s what’s going to happen,” said Trump, “because we have millions and millions of people pouring into our country, many from prisons and jails and mental institutions and insane asylums. Traffickers, human traffickers, women traffickers, sex traffickers, which, by the way, that’s the kind of thing that people should be looking at, because it’s horrible.”
Here, I’ll note that it is unclear whether Trump understands that “asylum” in immigration refers to seeking refuge or sanctuary and not, as he seems to think, to the kind of institution that you might find in a Batman movie.
To the extent that Trump had a solution to this imagined problem, it was mass deportation. In fact, mass deportation is his — and his campaign’s — answer to a whole set of policy questions. What, for example, will Trump do about housing costs? Well, his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, says that they’ll deport 20 million people and that this, somehow, will bring prices down.
I have written before about what a regime of mass deportation would actually look like:
What we’ll see in practice is an indiscriminate roundup of anyone who might appear to be an immigrant — a mass campaign of racial and ethnic profiling. Because it would be beyond the capacity of the federal government to immediately return detainees to their “home” countries, the Trump team also plans to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants on land near the Texas border. Internment camps, essentially.
Given the extent to which mass deportation is one of the few real priorities for Donald Trump as he fights for a second term, I think it is even more important to emphasize the truth of the matter, which is that Trump is running on a promise of forced removal, based on a vicious campaign of anti-migrant demonization and dehumanization, that would bring an unimaginable level of suffering to a huge number of people. How else would you describe a plan to remove 20 million people from the country on the basis of suspected national origins? Do we really believe that Trump’s deportation force would target European immigrants on expired visas, or do we think that he has a particular, racialized image of the deportee in mind?
And if you think that this would be a calm, orderly process, think again. As I wrote earlier:
Trump’s policy of child separation was also noteworthy for the poor conditions suffered by separated families living in government facilities. Child detainees lacked adequate food, water and sanitation. There were also reports of mistreatment, as in the case of the Border Patrol agents who were accused of telling detained women to drink out of toilet bowls. Now, imagine the conditions that might prevail for hundreds of thousands of people crammed into hastily constructed camps, the targets of a vicious campaign of demonization meant to build support for their detention and deportation. If undocumented immigrants really are, as Trump says, “poisoning the blood of our country,” then how do we respond? What do we do about poison? Well, we neutralize it.
Trump may not accomplish everything he hopes to do. Any attempt to commence what would be one of the largest forced displacements of people in human history would run into fierce resistance. But if we learned anything from his first term in office, Trump will try, and he will inflict some pain, on someone.
What I Wrote
My Friday column was on Donald Trump’s effort to evade responsibility for his administration’s assault on abortion rights.
Trump wants this to be the end of the conversation, and it might have been had Biden remained in the race. But with Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, Democrats have placed abortion rights and reproductive health care at the center of their pitch to women. Abortion, in fact, is now the top issue for many voters in swing states. And they trust Harris, not Trump, to handle their concerns.
Now Reading
Arielle Angel on Florida for Jewish Currents.
Cathleen Kaveny on the Roberts Court for Commonweal magazine.
Jenny Uglow on the silkworm for the New York Review of Books.
Asher Elbein on J.R.R. Tolkien for the Heat Death newsletter.
Will Stancil on running for office in his Substack newsletter.
Photo of the Week
A somewhat ominous looking door I saw in Savannah, Ga. earlier this year.
Now Eating: Toor Dal (Split Yellow Peas)
I started making dal, with the help of Madhur Jaffrey’s indispensable cookbooks, as a broke 22-year-old living on a paltry salary in Washington, D.C. It was cheap and, with a bowl of rice, very filling. I still eat dal almost every week for much the same reasons: it’s cheap, easy to put together, and perfect for lunch or a light dinner. This recipe for a dal of split yellow peas is from NYT Cooking and can be read, with a few adjustments, as a template for almost any dal. Don’t have yellow split peas? Use split red lentils or my favorite, split mung beans, also called moong dal.
Ingredients
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1 cup toor dal (split yellow pigeon peas)
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2 Roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
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¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
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½ teaspoon kosher salt
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¼ cup raw whole peanuts
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¼ cup ghee or vegetable oil such as olive, peanut or avocado
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1 sprig fresh curry leaves
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3 small pieces Indian cinnamon or 1 cinnamon stick
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3 red dried chiles, such as chile de árbol
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3 cloves
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¼ teaspoon black mustard seeds
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Pinch of asafoetida
Directions
Prepare the dal: Soak the pigeon peas in a large bowl of warm water for about 1 hour. (They will have swelled a little.) Thoroughly rinse the soaked pigeon peas with fresh water, then tip the drained pigeon peas into a pot.
Add tomatoes, turmeric, salt and 5 cups water, and bring to a boil over high. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until very tender, 25 to 30 minutes.
Use an immersion blender to purée some of the dal, leaving some intact and getting some very smooth, or whisk vigorously to break up some of the soft dal. Stir in the peanuts and continue to simmer, stirring occasionally, until the dal is very tender, about 30 minutes. Taste and adjust with salt. If the dal has become too thick for your liking, stir in a splash of water.
Prepare the tempering: In a small saucepan over medium heat, warm the ghee. When hot, carefully add all of the tempering ingredients (the mustard seeds will sputter!) and swirl the pan until you can smell all the toasted spices, about 30 seconds. Pour everything over the hot dal.
The post None of Trump’s Economic ‘Solutions’ Hold Any Water appeared first on New York Times.
