Ramstad: What a re-elected Trump would mean for Minnesota's economy - Ramstad, strib

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At his rallies, Trump frequently says he will impose a 10% tariff on all imports to the U.S. and a 60% tariff on goods from China. He also plans to deport millions of illegal immigrants and impose his will on the Federal Reserve. I doubt he'll succeed with the latter two things, though attempting them will slow the overall economy. He'll confuse financial markets trying to influence the Fed. He'll disrupt construction, agriculture and other industries that rely on immigrant workers.

His tariff policies will lead to more inflation in the U.S. and retaliation from other countries on American-made goods. Trump insisted at the debate that tariffs don't raise prices on consumers, but that's untrue. I disliked Trump's trade policies in his first term. The trade war he started with China, and tariffs he imposed on other goods the U.S. imports, hurt Minnesota consumers. When China retaliated, the state's farmers were harmed as exports of their crops fell. To make up for the damage, the government raised its payments to farmers, which were below $20 billion the first two years Trump was in office, to nearly $50 billion in 2020.

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Since 2016, Trump campaigned on the notion that illegal immigrants steal jobs from Americans. It's something he has complained about since the 1980s even though he routinely employed them in his businesses, even while president. However, labor markets in much of the country changed from loose to tight while he was in office and grew tighter still since 2020 as more baby boomers retired. Minnesota is one of about a dozen states that have a smaller workforce than they did in February 2020, the month before pandemic-related shutdowns.

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Instead of relying so much on immigrants to fill jobs, Vance argues U.S. employers need to re-attract the approximately 7 million working-age men who checked out of the labor force. Those men are out there, analysts Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution and Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute have documented in recent books. I suspect the price to bring them back to work is higher than Vance thinks. And I doubt Trump has ever thought about it.

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