Trump’s Attack on Working People Demands a Bold, Progressive Response

Trump’s Attack on Working People Demands a Bold, Progressive Response

Trump’s Attack on Working People Demands a Bold, Progressive Response

Piecemeal reforms won’t do the job.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

A recent cover of The Economist hails the “great jobs boom” across the developed world. Although President Trump claims credit for the good news, the reality is that the boom is global: Two-thirds of developed countries enjoy record high employment among those of working age. Yet even with the global economy at its best, it still doesn’t work for working people, particularly in the United States.

It’s true that the top-line unemployment rate in the United States—3.6 percent—is the lowest in half a century (although distorted because labor-force participation is still depressed) and wages finally have begun to stir. But Trump’s claim that his tax cuts and deregulation policies are the cause of this is laughable. Assessing the 2017 tax cuts, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted that gross domestic product growth in 2018—2.9 percent—was virtually the same as the Congressional Budget Office had projected without the tax cuts. Nor was there any “indication of a surge in wages.” Instead, there was—as critics predicted—a record $1 trillion in stock buybacks, as chief executives and investors pocketed the tax giveaways.

Similarly, Trump’s deregulation boasts are also, not surprisingly, a stretch. A review by Rutgers University professor Stuart Shapiro concludes that it was “extremely unlikely” that Trump’s deregulation through his first year in office had “any appreciable effect on the economy.” In fact, the states and cities enjoying the greatest jobs boom are largely those in which labor-market regulations—hikes in the minimum wage, guarantees of vacation or family-leave time, crackdowns on wage theft and more—are proliferating.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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