Donald Trump Will Be a Good President

Donald Trump has been called a variety of things during his campaign for President of the United States. Racist, xenophobic, sexist, etc. However, I believe that these claims are misguided and have absolutely no evidence to back them up. But these are the main criticisms of him. We need to actually look at his policy positions and judge them for ourselves, and after doing such an action, I believe that Trump is unfit to be President of the United States. He is a nationalistic populist that has a platform built on reactionary policies. For example, Donald Trump has said that he wants to punish Mexico and China for taking advantage of our economy by imposing mass tariffs upon them. This can cause a variety of problems. Trump and other fair trade proponents claim that free trade increases the unemployment rate, and that we've been steadily declining since 1990. While manufacturing jobs may be sent to countries with lower wage workers, if we look at the unemployment rate long-term, we can see that it didn't have any dramatic effects (1). Trump's trade policy will also ruin our economy and create toxic international relationships, as it did in 1930 with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. This is an over simplification on the matter though, and I insist those who want more information on this to go watch the video in source (2). In summary, similar to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (which numerous economists believe perpetuated the Great Depression), Trump's trade policy will make goods be more expensive and will cause countries to no longer trade with us, creating a bubble economy (3). Moving on to Trump's tax plan, he has said that anyone that makes $0-25,000 a year will pay no federal income tax ($50,000 for married filers). He wants to lower taxes for all American people, with a tax policy with only 4 brackets going from 0% to 25%. He will also eliminate estate and gift taxes, and lower corporate tax rates. According to Tax Foundation and a variety of other sources, his tax plan will cause a larger deficit, and in turn a larger debt. Trump tries to justify this by saying he'll get rid of the federal Department of Education and the EPA, but with his dedication to leaving Social Security and Medicare alone, and his dramatic increase in defense and immigration-patrol spending, odds are our largest expenditures will continue to be our downfall (4/5). Speaking of his immigration plan: Trump's immigration plan will cost us hundreds of billions of dollars (6/7). He proposes a mass deportation tactic, similar to Operation Wetback, which was in violation of various human rights and has been a taint on American history (8). He also supports requiring the E-Verify system for all of the private sector, building a wall on the US-Mexican border, tripling the amount of border patrol ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on the border. Though he has said that Mexico will pay for some of these proposals, various Mexican politicians have denied the offer, and have made it clear that Trump is already causing tension between the two neighboring nations (9). He has threatened to make the wall taller, cut visas to the United States, eliminate foreign aid to Mexico, impound remittance sent to Mexico, and impose hefty tariffs on their goods until they build the wall. Some might call this racist towards Hispanics, and I do not see it that way. I believe this is just Donald Trump emphasizing the "America first" narrative that nationalists and populists push to get votes, to play on the fear of the America people. We've talked about how Trump will cause toxic relationships with Mexico and China, but what about the rest of the world? Countries from all over have responded to Trump's policies on immigration and his plan for ISIS (10). His temporary ban on Muslim immigrants is, not only impossible to enforce, but against the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution (11). But this isn't the only unconstitutional proposal from Trump regarding the Islamic religion. He has also voiced support for creating a "Muslim database," to track down Muslims, and the supervision of "certain mosques." This has led to him being in terrorist recruitment videos, though it could also be the result of Hillary Clinton claiming that there was such a video before it existed (12). Some people support Trump because he's "anti-establishment," even though he has supported a variety of establishment candidates and status-quo positions. He has funded both establishment Democrats and Republicans, such as Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid (13). He endorsed McCain in 2008 (14), and Romney in 2012 (15). The definition of the establishment is, "elites who control the party system, party elections, and fund disbursements" (16). These people also "don't challenge the media-industrial complex," according to Tony Lee, author at Breitbart News. While Trump has criticized the media, I don't believe he denies the fact that it's making him win. We can see the correlation between Trump's media coverage and the more people research him, the more popular he gets (17)(18). Why would someone challenge something that helps them out? I think Trump is a nationalist, defined by Merriam Webster as "a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups" (19) and he is also a populist, being defined from the same source as "a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people" (20). He is not anti-establishment. He is simply playing to current political climate of the United States, with people on every side of the spectrum becoming more paranoid about corrupt elections, job loss, corporate greed, Islamic extremists, etc. 1. http://data.bls.gov... 2. 3. http://www.economist.com... 4. http://www.ontheissues.org... 5. 6. http://www.politico.com... 7. http://www.businessinsider.com... 8. http://www.nbcnews.com... 9. http://www.cnn.com... 10. https://www.washingtonpost.com... 11. https://www.law.cornell.edu... 12. http://www.cnn.com... 13. http://www.politifact.com... 14. 15. http://www.cnn.com... 16. http://usconservatives.about.com... 17. http://decisiondata.org... 18. 19. http://www.merriam-webster.com... 20. http://www.merriam-webster.com...