THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
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The Donald gets things done – with devastating effect

The Donald gets things done – with devastating effect

Re: “Is this man a good role model for your child?”, Have Your Say, May 1.

Letters by “Ye Olde Pedant” are a pleasure to read, always provoking thought and laughs even when he has the facts disturbingly wrong in giving Trump an “A” grade for his policies, as in this case.
I’ll try to be as brief as possible in my arguments and leave the informed reader to fill in the blanks for himself:
Writing that Trump established peace on the Korean peninsula is too simplistic; does the Olde Pedant really think that Trump’s threat to start a nuclear war was the dominating factor behind the meeting between Kim and Moon?
The uplifting of the US economy started under Obama, was caused by his policies, and extended under Trump. The effects of new economic policies take a lot of time to kick in. Can the Pedant show me one policy introduced by Trump to stimulate the economy? Please don’t mention the tax cuts that “boosted the disposable income for the average American”; the fact is 83 per cent of the cuts went to 1 per cent of Americans. Their effect will likely be negative since the financing of these cuts caused a substantial reduction of subsidies for government services, making these more expensive. Meanwhile history shows that the trickle-down effect is a mirage since the rich will not consume more and the companies (as they have admitted) will not use the billions from tax cuts to create new jobs. And why should they? Expansion will only happen when demand increases. 
Add to this the introduction of tariffs, making imported products more expensive, and the retaliation by targeted countries, which will shrink US exports. This situation will worsen when Trump implements threats for more tariffs, leading to a trade war and a US recession in the making. The first signs of negative effects from the tax cuts are already emerging: lower jobs and economic growth, with Trump’s promised 3-per-cent-plus economic growth falling steeply to 2.3 per cent. Don’t equate the rise on Wall Street with the economy!
Evidently the Pedant doesn’t know that Trump slashed the budget to combat the US drug crisis by hundred of millions of dollars and appointed the incompetent Kellyanne Conway to oversee the fight instead of a specialist! Or does he believe that Jeff Sessions’ war on the legalisation of marijuana counts as being tough, when in fact legalisation is helping curb the drug crisis?
Did Trump really stop illegal immigration? Look at the facts. The lunatic wall is still not built – and would not stop illegals from entering the US anyway. The travel ban on Muslims was thrown out by the courts, and wouldn’t help at all since the terrorist attacks in the US have been committed by citizens of countries not on the list of banned countries.
Giving Trump an “A” on these four topics shows an utter lack of understanding of the facts. That grade could apply only in one area: the effectiveness of his policies in destroying the environment in the US and the rest of the world.
Egon

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