100 Days of Trump
It’s been 100 days of Donald Trump: “The numbers are good,” says Tom Homan, the border czar, referring to the reported 139,000 people who have been deported since the president was inaugurated (a number also promoted in a “PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT” White House press release).
But like so many of the administration’s touted accomplishments, the number that’s being bragged about is likely very different than the reality. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is required to share deportation numbers with Congress, says it’s removed roughly 57,000 people (which squares with the count of roughly 400 deportation flights, at 125 people a flight). Of course, ICE removals aren’t the full picture: ICE works in conjunction with Customs and Border Protection, which handles arrests and removals at the border. So CBP numbers would have to make up the other half of that 139,000 total, but Trump has basically sealed the border, so very few apprehensions and subsequent deportations are actually happening down there. The number is sort of beside the point, though: Trump has routinely flouted due process, denying trials to illegal immigrants accused of being MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members, using the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected “terrorists” but not actually proving that these people are terrorists in a court of law (more here, here, here, here). Ridding the country of actual violent criminals who entered illegally is something Americans broadly support; ripping families apart (even when they entered illegally), and depriving the accused of due process has dampened Trump’s formerly broad approval from the American public. Oh, and throwing the Make-a-Wish population into immigration detention doesn’t help.
Playing fast and loose with the numbers and labels and law is classic Trump. Consider the tariff rates announced on “Liberation Day” (which liberated lots of people from feeling good about their stock portfolios): Can anyone even keep track of what they are right now? The zone has been flooded with tariff-related announcements, and Trump has gone back and forth on what amounts they are and why and for which countries and when they’re taking effect, seemingly fixated on the idea that trade deficits are inherently a problem, a sign of American weakness or the average Joe being ripped off.
Consider the “reciprocal” tariffs—that were not, in fact, reciprocal at all, calculated based on trade deficits, not on what each country charges us—they were signed into law on April 2, with the first 10 percent going into effect on April 5, and then the country-specific increases—which would ratchet goods from, say, Vietnam, up to a 46 percent tariff—were delayed 90 days on April 9 (with the exception of China, which was made 10 percent initially, then increased to 20 percent, then ratcheted up to 145 percent). If you can’t keep up, know you’re not alone. “This is not a negotiation,” wrote trade adviser Peter Navarro, which is odd, because Trump appears to be…negotiating with the likes of Japan, South Korea, and India. (“90 deals in 90 days,” is the new Navarro line, which contradicts what he had just said.)
To justify the trade policies, the administration has gone with “we’re reshoring critical industries because we don’t want to be reliant on China” (which we already did, for semiconductors) but also “we’re revitalizing hollowed-out manufacturing regions like the Rust Belt.” Regardless of which story it sticks with, factories will need critical components from places like China to get manufacturing up and running. And markets need some amount of predictability, not the constant back and forth. Meanwhile, consumers haven’t really started to feel the effects of tariffs, mostly because shipping takes a long time, and there’s a lag, so they haven’t felt the depressed shipping volumes or noticed shortages yet. Trump’s defenders—dwindling in number as the economy gets wrecked—have been going with the line that he’s “the first president in generations to tell Wall Street to screw itself” and that “he’s for the working men and women of this country.” Never mind that everyday goods will skyrocket in price and that there’s no such thing as some sort of centralized, nameless, faceless “Wall Street,” nor does its getting screwed help normal Americans in the slightest. (“Wall Street for the last three election cycles chose the Democrats,” noted the same Trump defender on my sh
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