Turns out it was a good idea for Trump, but a disaster for the country. 

The bombing of Iran quickly supplanted news about his sexually assaulting and hitting a minor, his corruption, Constitutional violations, more brutal ICE killings, and his election rigging. He can also claim emergency powers that he’ll try to use to deploy troops against protesters, postpone the midterm elections and give Republicans something to cheer about. 

This isn’t a political accusation. It’s a string of facts. Our president raged war against a country and fired the people who protect us from its retaliation.

The war is catastrophic for the United States. It’s already killed dozens of school children (who the Chairman of the American Conservative Union claims are better off dead), a thousand other civilians, will kill countless more, and cause major economic disruption throughout the world.

Trump claims he wants regime change. It didn’t work in Iraq and won’t in Iran. Like in Iran, we killed Iraq’s leader, it ended in decade-long brutal civil war and increased the region’s hatred towards America. 

The attack on Iran has also heightened the risk of a nuclear event either by intention or mistake. It could originate with Trump who wanted to nuke North Korea in the last month of his first administration. But General Mark Milley was there to stop him. There’s no Milley now, only a sycophant, alcoholic, unqualified Fox News co-host shockingly confirmed by Republican Senators. 

Trump is capable of hitting the button out of his anger at something unrelated to the issue at hand. He launched his tariffs his steel tariffs upon becoming “unglued” over  Hope Hicks’ testimony about Russia’s election interference and because his chief of staff dropped his son-in-law’s security clearance. There were no meaningful consultations, research or explanations, no alert of foreign trade partners or Congress. No one at the State, Treasury or Defense Departments were notified that tariffs were about to be announced — just like he started a war with Iran without the Constitutionally required Congressional approval. 

After becoming frustrated over his staff’s inability to reach a consensus on pardoning January 6 attackers, he threw up his hands and said, “”F–k it, Release ’em all,” and he released into the streets dozens of prisoners with prior convictions or pending charges for crimes of rape, sexual abuse of a minor, manslaughter, child pornography, drug trafficking. 

If Iran nears defeat and develops the capability, it’s final retaliation could be a nuclear bomb, perhaps not on America’s homeland, but within the region.  Most Western observers view Iran’s priorities as protecting their national interest, but they’re dictated more by religious doctrine. And many clerics preach that the deployment of nuclear weapons is permissible as a last resort.

An unintended nuclear launch has always been more likely than an intentional one. Of the 24 close calls where nuclear war was narrowly avoided, only the Cuban missile crisis involved one nuclear power threatening another. The other incidents resulted from faulty technology, misinterpreted data, human error, and a Soviet false alarm. A nuclear disaster could also result from Iran missiles and drones hitting U.S. and UK nuclear facilities in as many as ten of them. 

Iran still has lethal military power. It can fire hundreds of missiles at U.S. facilities in the Middle East and awaken its regional network of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian who share Iran’s animosity toward Israel the United States. Support from Tehran enabled the Houthis to fire missiles into Israel.

Intelligence assessments indicate that Iran has active sleeper cells throughout the United States.

As hostilities escalate, Trump’s war could plunge the global economy into an inflationary crisis led by the price of oil, especially if Iran cripples shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

The consequences could be Trump’s worst. But will they be bad enough for his Republican toadies to find their consciences?

The post IRAN – A GREAT IDEA FOR TRUMP, A DISASTER FOR AMERICA first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

Bipartisanship is impossible when one party is bound by lies whether they believe them or not and are unencumbered by the truth. The Republicans’ unanimous standing ovations for Trump falsehoods demonstrates that they’re confined to them in their policymaking.    

The Republicans stood and cheered for his most blatant and pernicious lies – including his touting of policies that will upend the quality of life of nearly all Americans. For example:

Trump praised his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” as a “turnaround for the ages,” suggesting that it will spur economic growth and pay for Republicans $4.5 trillion tax cut for America’s wealthiest. The nasty truth is Republicans will replace the lost tax revenues by cutting Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance programs.

He claimed that undocumented immigrants were criminals who are responsible for importing drugs, murder, sex trafficking, rape and other  violent crimes.  

The truth is that undocumented immigrants are arrested less than half as often as native-born citizens for drug crimes and have the lowest homicide arrest rate of all people sur, according to a 2024 study funded by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice.

As part of his obsession to undo everything President Obama accomplished he continued to claim it was unaffordable and claimed he had a better and cheaper [undisclosed] plan. The Truth: overturning Obamacare could leave 21+ million Americans without insurance. 

Also, Republicans refused to extend the Obamacare subsidies. As a result premiums would rise from $888 in 2025 to about $1,904 in 2026.

And he claimed that his tariffs are paid “by foreign countries,” but they are paid by U.S. consumers, farmers, and businesses. Now that the Supreme Court held the tariffs to be illegal, he will have to reimburse those who paid them. Interestingly, most Republicans remained seated for his tariff lie.

Most Americans know when Trump is lying (which is almost always). It’s a safe assumption that Republicans also know. So why do they endorse his lies with standing ovations? The most common answer is the same reason they pass his policies – that they don’t want to face a primary challenger backed by Trump. So they value keeping their seats more than keeping their oaths to their constituents and all other Americans. 

Trump is incapable of reversing course. Unless the Republicans find the courage to contain him, the U.S. will suffer lasting economic and geopolitical costs for years to come. What’s most alarming is that Trump checks all the boxes that mental health professionals use to diagnose a malignant narcissist, which combines  narcissism with sadism, paranoia, and antisocial behavior. They take pleasure in harming others, are ruthlessly manipulative, and seek to destroy others to maintain power, often showing no remorse for their abusive actions. Yet the Republicans have turned him loose to destroy the leadership, influence, trust and respect America has taken seven decades to earn.

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Trump also referred to Nazi protestors as “Very Fine People,” Mimicked the movements of a crippled reporter, said John McCain wasn’t a war hero because he was captured, and claimed he stopped several wars that never happened. The list of is long and, let’s say, not presidential.

Ty Cobb, a former member of the Trump Administration, noted Trump’s warning to Norway leaders that he could disregard peace with them because they didn’t give him the Nobel Peace Prize Cobb said, “I don’t think there’s anybody outside of the United States who believes that Trump is sane.” 

Mark my words. When Trump is gone and the complicit Republicans in Congress are blamed for the damage he’s done, they’ll create desperate fictions to disassociate themselves from him, just like the Nazis denied anything to do whatsoever with the Holocaust. 

The Republicans let him brazenly flout our laws, violate court orders and disassemble the blueprint of our governance. As Sir Thomas More, Arch Bishop of Canterbury, warned, “This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, … And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?” All will suffer, including those you took an oath to protect. 

More’s admonishments should also be heeded by the Supreme Court’s majority who mangled the Constitution to advanced Trump’s march to dictatorship.

To paraphrase a More admonishment of a man who perjured himself, “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for [a seat in Congress]?” 

Impeachment may be a drastic step, but it is a necessary one. The Republicans should join the Democrats and impeach and convict Trump to stop and repair the damage he’s caused, and restore the honor, trust and respect that Republicans helped Trump strip away from our country by reducing a once respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.

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Although workers in 19 states have received  an increase in their minimum wage to $15 per hour while the rest of Americans will work for a federal minimum wage of $7.25, the increases are not enough to cover middle and low income earners’ basic expenses. Prices projected to keep rising include beef, coffee, eggs, dairy and sugar.

Trump has put Stephen Miran, a close advisor of Trump, on the Fed’s board of governors. Shocking, Miran will stays in the administration as a Trump advisor while he’s a mole on the board for the President.  Trump is also trying to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden-appointed governor, claiming that she’s committed mortgage fraud, but the Supreme stopped him until it hears the case.

And if Trump’s compliant Supreme Court majority allows him to replace Cook, he’ll hold a majority on the Fed. Then Trump won’t need to pressure anyone – he’ll make interest rate decisions himself, and inflation is sure to follow. It always has when leaders exercise control over their central banks.

President Richard Nixon pressured Fed Chair Arthur Burns to keep interest rates low going into the 1972 presidential election. The Fed succumbed, the economy had a spurt, and Nixon got reelected. Predictably, four years after his presidency, inflation rates hit 15%, and the dollar lost 12 percent of its value.

It took painful interest-rate increases under new Fed Chair Paul Volker to get the inflation under control. In 1980, Volker raised rates to a record high of 20 percent. Inflation still shot up to 11.6 percent in March. High mortgage and car loan rates made homes and cars unaffordable, curtailed consumer spending and sent the economy into a severe recession. 

Argentina’s Consumer Price Index started surging in 1946 after President Juan Peron nationalized the central bank and had the banks expand the money supply and lower rates in order to accommodate aggressive public spending. The annual inflation rate reached 18.74%. By the end of 1951, the CPI surged to 50.21%. The accumulated inflation rate in just six years reached 297.57%. Clearly, the main cause of Argentina’s hyperinflation was its central bank’s enabling of political profligacy.

In January 2007, Argentina’s President Christina Kirchner, in a striking similarity to Trump, didn’t like her experts’ consumer price index numbers. So she fired them, replaced them with political appointees and threated prosecution against independent economists who published higher CPI estimates.

Turkey’s another example. Its inflation rates have been in double digits since Trump’s authoritarian idol, President Erdogan, appointed a central bank head to lower rates. Although the bank eventually raised rates, annual price gains were still around 40% as of January 2025.

These are examples of politicians seizing control over central banks for their own political gain while their countries bore the pain of higher inflation. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a House subcommittee, in referring to Volker’s increase of rates to stem rising inflation, . “No one wants to see that happen again”… except Trump.

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After all, Putin’s popularity only grows with his invasions. His ratings rose to 84 percent during the second war in Chechnya and to 88 percent after he annexed Crimea. Putin has called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”  The takeover of Venezuela has to evoke the “he-did-it-why-can’t-I” justification to invade NATO members that were formerly part of the USSR. 

Trump’s aggression could also give Xi implied permission to bully its neighbors around the South China Sea and fulfill its historic claim to Taiwan. China has already violated the Hague International Court’s order declaring than Vietnam had the legal right to drill there. But it had to back off citing doubt that America would come to its aid . There’s no doubt that Trump won’t now. 

 Both countries have been trying to carve the world up into their own spheres of influence with each ruled by a single dictator. Trump would like nothing more than to join them. He’s knowingly diminishing America’s status as a superpower and watching as  Putin and Xi supplant the US-dominated world order with one that will give them and Trump the power and leverage to write the rules and intimidate other countries. 

His intensions, if you believe what his declaration says, that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again” portend more aggression outside U.S. borders. Moreover, Trump’s Security Strategy puts the first priority on the Western Hemisphere, which declares the Americas and their surrounding waters as Washington’s sphere of dominance.

There’s a better way to expand Washington’s sphere of dominance in Latin America. It’s by growing US trust, trade, influence and hegemony  (dominance achieved through political and economic efforts) in the region. 

Sadly, though, it’s not in Trump’s DNA. He’s much more comfortable with cruel force and pernicious power.  But the opportunity is there for a new and rational President or for Republicans with integrity and the county’s best interests at heart. 

Venezuela’s GDP has fallen by 75% in a decade. Oil production has collapsed. Public services can barely function. In seven out of 24 Venezuelan states the food insecurity rate is 99%, and only three states are lower than 90%. Around 82.4% of households live in poverty  and around 50.5% live in extreme poverty. 

So, the better solution is to employ a small Marshal Plan in Venezuela like the US did in Europe after World War II, which built economic and political stability. Given the Venezuelans’ jubilation over Maduro’s fall, the country is likely to welcome one there and cooperate.

After the devastation of Europe in World War II, the Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization, agricultural production, brought extensive investment into the region, expanded traded, established financial stability and stimulated the U.S. economy by developing markets for American goods.

Similarly to Europe in 1948, Venezuela’s requirements for foreign food and other essential products far exceed its ability to pay for them. So the country needs significant assistance to prosper, and the US is in a position and has the opportunity to fulfill its needs … and also the needs of the greater region, which ranks as one of the most unequal regions in the world with the poorest 50 percent only holding 0.8 percent of its wealth.

A Marshal-type plan is also necessary to supplant China’s rapidly growing influence in Latin America and Russia’s military aid to Venezuela. It sent nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela as a show of force in 2018. China ratified a “strategic partnership” with Venezuela last October to establish a platform for spreading its influence across Latin America. China also loaned more than $100 billion to the region over the last quarter-century.

But if US oil companies control  and then export Venezuela’s oil revenues instead of redirecting them back into the country, no government will be able to restore even a modicum of prosperity to the country. 

And a quick disengagement from Venezuela by the U.S. is likely to leave it fatally ungoverned, unstable, and losing people and capital. 

Tragically for Venezuela and the world’s stability, Trump is no Darth Vaderwho, after a lifetime of evil, becomes an unselfish and well-meaning.  

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• An “expectation” [emphasis added] butnot a promise that Russia won’t invade NATO  members 
• NATO will not expand its membership.
• Ukraine won’t join NATO 
• European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland where they’ll be easy targets for the Russian military.

Russia has included its own benefits:

• Russia will be re-integrated into the global economy.
• Russia will be invited back into the G8. 
• Crimea and Donbas will be recognized as Russian, including by the United States.
• Ukraine to hold elections in 100 days, likely enabling Putin to install a puppet government,
• The agreement’s implementation and enforcement will be Chaired by Trump. 
• That western military aid to Kyiv be halted during a 30-day cease fire, making it open season on Ukraine. 
• Putin will revisit a demand for NATO to halt the deployment of weapons in member states that joined after 1997, when NATO began expanding into former communist countries.

Trump’s accommodation of Putin is not surprising. It fits a pattern of favoring his idol Vladimir Putin over his own country, and over Zelensky 

Consequently, Trump is on the verge of letting Putin prevail in Ukraine and giving him a green light to invade European NATO members to fulfill Putin’s dream of  a Russian-led Eurasian empire. Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia is likely a first target because, just like Ukraine, they were parts of the Soviet Union and are home to around a million ethnic Russians. 

As former US Secretaries of State and Defense, Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates warned, “ If … Ukraine is defeated, Russia will almost certainly … attack NATO member countries.” 

Germany, France and the UK assured Zalensky of their continued support if the U.S. abandons Ukraine, and said, “the Ukrainian armed forces must remain in a position to defend …. Ukraine effectively.” But their success becomes more doubtful should Trump carry out his threat.

Importantly, there’s more at stake than Ukraine. China is carefully following what Trump does with Ukraine as a guide to what it does with Taiwan. It’s likely that Trump will give Xi his best opportunity to invade.

It boils down to Trump’s pursuing a cosmetic peace to garner primary votes for his chosen candidates, endear himself to his Russian idol and, laughably, win the Nobel Peace prize. It has nothing to do with defending Ukraine, Europe or, for that matter, what’s best for America.   

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The Democrats settled for a promise that the Senate will vote on a bill to extend the subsidies by the end of the second week of December when Speaker  The Democrats who voted with the Republicans are either stupid or have been corrupted by our Chief Corrupter, President Trump. 

Open Enrollment in ACA coverage for 2026 begins on November 1^st. The subsidies are extremely unlikely to be adopted by then, so the options that millions of Americans will be left with will require higher premiums and lower coverage.

Republicans have been trying to cut health benefits for years and currently target Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Democrats ignored the fact that Trump’s obscene tax cuts are part of a decades-long sinister plan to increase our deficits and national debt, and create shortfalls so they can throw up their hands and lament that they have no option but to cut America’s safety nets. 

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Despite all evidence to the contrary, most voters in battleground states believe that former President Donald Trump would do more for the economy than President Biden in a second term.reflecting their belief in the Trump economy’s potential.

Polling Results and the Trump Economy

A new poll shows Trump leading in all swing states except Wisconsin (where Trump and Biden tie), with 56 percent of voters saying the former president would do a good job on the economy versus just 40 percent for Biden. 

The Reality of the Trump Economy

These voters are sadly mistaken. Trump’s first term and current policy proposals are dire warnings that a second round of Trumponomics would be devastating to everyday Americans. 

Trump Economy and Tax Cuts

Trump is promising to give big tax cuts to everybody, and to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the truth is that his proposed tax cuts will benefit the wealthy at the expense of low- and middle-income Americans, and he will cut entitlements to cover any lost tax revenues. 

Historical Lessons from the Trump Economy

We’ve seen this movie before. In 2016, Trump promised his tax cuts would favor working- and middle-class Americans. The cuts he delivered, however, favored the wealthy, widened income inequality, and encouraged massive tax fraud (which Trump may view as normal practice, given his own bogus tax write-offs). 

Impact of Trump Economy on Income Distribution

By the time they expire next year, Trump’s tax cuts are projected to have boosted after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of earners by 3 percent, to an average of $2.1 million. But they barely affect the bottom 60 percent of earners, increasing their 2025 incomes just 1 percent, to $41,800.

Long-Term Effects of Trump Economy on Tax Savings

By 2025, average tax savings will amount to just $70 for the bottom 20 percent of earners, $61,090 for the top 1 percent, and $252,300 for the top 0.1 percent. If extended to 2027, the tax cuts would actually make low- and middle-income earners worse off.

Trump Economy and Federal Debt

Trump promised his tax cuts would pay for themselves by generating robust economic growth. But that never happened, so they ended up adding between $1 trillion and $2 trillion to the federal debt. 

Entitlement Spending and the Trump Economy

Republican leaders blamed this on Democrats for borrowing too much, and they use this talking point to push for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Trump himself signaled openness to cutting entitlements before walking his comments back and promising to protect them. But unlike the party elites, most rank-and-file Republican voters actually want to expand them. 

Fiscal Challenges and the Trump Economy

Rising entitlement spending isn’t our real fiscal problem. In fact, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office dramatically lowered its forecast for growth in healthcare costs. Our deficits are due primarily to Trump’s tax cuts. Extending them would add another $4.6 trillion to the federal debt, CBO found. 

Republican Proposals in the Trump Economy Era

Rather than confront that reality, the Republican Study Committee, which represents a majority of congressional Republicans, keeps proposing big cuts to Social Security. So when Trump vows to “never…hurt” entitlements, or that extending his tax cuts will benefit the majority of Americans and pay for themselves, voters would be ill-advised to believe him.  

Trump Economy and Tariff Impacts

Ditto for Trump’s claims about tariffs. He is threatening to slap new ones of at least 10 percent on the $3 trillion in goods we import annually. He insists exporting countries would pay for this, but it’s actually American consumers and businesses who would pay.

Effects of Tariffs in the Trump Economy

Universal 10 percent tariffs would cost U.S. households an average of $1,500 a year as companies raise prices to absorb them. They would trigger additional inflation, further increasing the cost of necessities like food, housing and healthcare, hitting working families hardest. And they’d endanger American jobs by hampering U.S. companies’ ability to compete. 

Trump Economy and Trade War Consequences

Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, for example, led to higher costs for U.S. manufacturers when Chinese suppliers cut their exports to the U.S. to avoid the tariffs. And when China switched to importing soybeans from the European Union, Argentina, Brazil and Russia, U.S. soybean exports plummeted by more than $10 billion. China also retaliated against Trump’s trade war by lowering tariffs on other trading partners to lure their imports away from the U.S.  

Donald Trump abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim economies including the U.S. and, importantly, excluding China. The TPP would have eliminated 18,000 tariffs on made-in-America exports including every type of U.S.-manufactured product and most agricultural products. It would also have imposed stronger labor and environmental standards on Asia’s state-owned enterprises, leveling the playing field with U.S. businesses, particularly small businesses, which make up 98 percent of U.S. exporters and employ millions of American workers. 

Walking away from the agreement made imported goods from Asia more expensive for Americans, hampered our exports to the southeast Asia, and hit Americans’ wallets, lowering average U.S. incomes by $131 billion through 2030.  

By scuttling the TPP, Trump ceded the field to China, which stepped in and replaced the U.S. with a Chinese-led trade agreement among 15 Asia‐Pacific countries, boosting trade among them and offering them greater access to China’s vast markets. That left Washington with fewer enticements to convince other countries to adopt U.S. trading rules.  

Such perverse tax and trade policies are likely to lead to a recession, which in Trump’s hands could spiral into depression. Tax cuts and extensive tariffs deepened the Great Depression. But in the 1920s the U.S. was a major creditor nation, with the flexibility to borrow and provide liquidity and stimulus. Today Republican tax cuts have driven U.S. debt to 116 percent of GDP, hobbling our ability to engineer our way out of a crisis. 

Unlike Presidents Bush and Obama, who tapped highly qualified leaders to manage the recovery from the 2008 recession, Trump will avoid anybody who isn’t a sycophant or who has the backbone to disagree with him. Instead he’ll hire enablers who are likely to preside over a new crisis and find ways to profit from it while the rest of the country suffers. It will fall hardest on low- and middle-income earners who haven’t shared in the wealth Trump’s tax cuts generated for elites.  

The post Mad about the economy? Blame Donald Trump. first appeared on Inside The Political Chaos.

The Republicans are increasing wealth and income inequality in America by playing bait-and-switch with the middle class through their tax reform policies.

The Immediate Benefits of GOP Tax Reform

The bait: The new tax law gives them immediate bonuses, higher wages and more take-home pay now. The switch begins next year, when the bottom income quartile receives the lowest benefit from the tax cuts and the top 5 percent receive the highest.

Income Gains and Disparities Under Tax Reform

Middle-class incomes will immediately increase, though higher income households will see higher increases — almost 30 percent higher — according to the Tax Policy Center. After-tax income in the 20-80 percent income range will rise 1.7 percent, while those in 95-99 percent income range will rise 2.2 percent.

Future Tax Reform Impacts on Different Income Groups

{mosads}But in 2019 the bottom 90 percent of earners will have lower after-tax income as a result of tax reform, while the top 5 percent will take home more. By 2027, the two lowest income quartiles will receive no benefit from the tax changes, while the top 0.1 percent receive the biggest.  A decade from now, two thirds of middle-class taxpayers will experience a tax hike. Meanwhile, the corporate tax rate reduction to 21 percent is permanent.  

Tax Reform’s Favoritism: Carried Interest and Corporate Benefits

The new tax law also continues a huge, controversial tax break for participation in profits, or “carried interest,” paid to hedge fund managers. They’ll pay a 23.8 percent tax on carried interest for assets held for one year, instead of the normal 39.5 percent rate. Although the amount of revenue lost is small, the break exposes Republicans’ contempt for the middle class, reflecting a belief that it is so uninformed, they can get away with such an in-your-face tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

GOP Tax Reform’s Impact on Health Care and the Federal Budget

Even more egregious, the GOP repealed the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate to pay for the tax cuts, which will lead to millions being uninsured, and then announced their intent to cut Medicare and Social Security. Trump then released his $4.4 trillion budget proposal, projecting next year’s deficit at double last year’s. Although it may have little impact on the budget Congress passes, it shows Trump’s disregard for economic prudence.

Stock Market Gains and Wealth Distribution

Trump has taken credit for the soaring stock market with a new slogan, “How’s your 401(k) doing?” If he deserves it, he should also claim credit for a massive enrichment of the wealthy. The wealthiest 10 percent own 84 percent of all stocks owned by Americans. Americans without a college education and their children are much less likely to have a direct stake in stocks. Lower-income Americans and minorities derive almost no direct benefit from the rise in stock prices.

Rising Deficits and Interest Rates Under Tax Reform

Sometime after the switch, the middle class will wake up to a $1.4 trillion deficit and debt-induced recession, in which they will fare much worse than the wealthy. Here, the Democrats are complicit.Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) couldn’t have spoken truer words when, describing the budget bill, he said, “It’s a bipartisan compromise in the wrong direction.” Now, with both parties on board, we’ve lost all control over our deficits and debt levels.

Interest rates the federal government pays on its debt are rising, and the CBO says they will triple over 10 years, so we’ll pay $818 billion in interest in 2027, and a total of $5.6 trillion in interest over the next 10 years. Debt service will be the third largest cost in the federal budget by 2026, the second by 2046, and the largest before 2050. Foreign investors are likely to demand higher rates on Treasury securities.

We will experience higher interest rates on mortgages for home buyers, consumers and businesses. That’s  a recipe for recession, which will hurt the middle class the most. Pew Research sorted out three tiers of the middle class and found that, in the Great Recession, the median income for the middle tier shrank 5 percent, while its wealth (assets minus debt) fell by 28 percent. The wealth of the lower-income tier plunged 45 percent.

Sure, top earners were hit, too. But it’s hard to shed tears for them. The income of the top 1 percent fell from $1.56 million in 2007 to $1.26 million in 2014, and the income of the top 0.01 percent fell to a mere $29 million.

The rich have rebounded completely from the recession in terms of employment and earnings. The middle-class and lower-income workers have not. That’s because job losses were concentrated in “middle skill” jobs that require more than a high-school diploma, but less than a college degree — jobs like manufacturing, assembly, mail delivery, and administrative support.  

With the impacts so weighted against the middle-class, how do the Republicans get away with their tax policy? Doesn’t the middle-class understand the implications of the downside?

Pew Research polled mostly middle-class and low-income Americans and found that 65 percent of them said they have somewhat of an understanding of the new tax law. Only 28 percent those said it will have a negative effect on them, and 32 percent said it won’t have much effect on them at all. Thirty-seven percent thought it will have a positive effect on them over the coming years.

Conclusion: The Need for Greater Public Awareness on Tax Reform

Those results indicate most Americans do not understand how tax reform’s downside will affect them after the switch kicks in. If Democrats want to be the party of the middle class and working families, they need to educate them so they see the tax law for what it is and vote accordingly. There’s plenty of opportunity to do so.

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Trump Mishandling of the Coronavirus

Donald Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus has shattered his favorite argument for getting reelected: the strong economy and buoyant stock market. The payroll tax cut he floated on Monday and the tax filing deadline extension he floated Wednesday won’t repair the virus’s economic damage —nor will it obscure his culpability for recklessly cutting health funding and trying to downplay the risks.

Economic Impact of Trump Mishandling

Even before Trump’s dismal performance in this week’s Oval Office address rattled markets and sowed confusion and chaos, he had already contributed to strangling the bull market by sowing uncertainty. He repeatedly contradicted his public health officials about the virus’s reach in the U.S. His administration missed the bulk of U.S. cases, leaving us without an accurate estimate of how far the virus had spread. That made it impossible to gauge how aggressive we should be in taking precautions. So many people and companies are acting out of an abundance of caution, which itself fuels economic contraction.

Stock Market Reactions and Trump Mishandling

Trump depended on the stock market as a reason for voters to support him. So he sent National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow to CNBC to restore confidence in stock values. Kudlow told investors “Stocks look pretty cheap to me,” and the markets “have gone too far.”

But Kudlow’s track record made his advice less than credible. Wall Street remembers the 2007 op-ed where he opined“the prosperity boom is alive and well… shares appear to be… 15 percent to 25 percent undervalued,” and he called the economy “solid.” Then the Great Recession of 2008 hit and the Dow Jones lost half its value.

In 2009 Kudlow criticized President Obama’s mortgage bailout as “a thinly disguised program… that redistributes income,” and added, “I say, let free-markets work.” But it’s now clear that the government bailout prevented the Great Recession from becoming a depression.

Trump Mishandling and Early Coronavirus Risks

Trump pointed to early coronavirus incidence and mortality rates in the U.S. (225 cases and 14 deaths on March 6) as evidence that the economic risks were low. Five days later, we have more than 1,700 cases and 40 deaths, and it’s evident that the economic risks are high.

Some economic forecasters estimated that if coronavirus became a pandemic, it could cost the global economy $1.1 trillion in lost income and shave 1.3 percent off global growth. WHO has now declared it a pandemic.

Global Economic Slowdown Due to Trump Mishandling

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says global economic growth will slow sharply as governments around the world act to contain the disease, declining to 1.5 percent or lower if the virus spreads in Africa, Latin America and India.

Goldman Sachs predicts zero earnings growth for U.S. companies this year, based on “the severe decline in Chinese economic activity in Q1, lower end-demand for U.S. exporters, and disruption to the supply chain for many U.S. firms.”

China’s Economic Impact and Trump Mishandling

In China, quarantines and voluntary closures to contain the outbreak have left factories short of labor. That combined with a decline in consumer demand to trigger a string of corporate profit warnings and sales warnings across technology, automotive, consumer goods, pharmaceutical and other industries. Manufacturing suffered its steepest slump on record as China’s Purchasing Managers Index fell to its lowest level since 2004.

China’s economic slowdown could clip global economic growth this year by 0.2 percent — the slowest pace since the Great Recession. If companies can’t buy what they need from China, they will lose sales and profits and fire workers.

Effects of Trump Mishandling on Global Trade

For example in the UK, 24 percent of retailers are already suffering supply chain disruptions. Only 7 percent can change suppliers, and 45 percent have lost sales. If the crisis worsens, around a third of British consumers may avoid public transport, restaurants and cinemas. That’s a snapshot of what may be happening elsewhere.

Within China, mobility and work disruptions have also led to marked declines in demand, including for foreign goods and services. That is squeezing multinational companies in sectors including electronics, consumer and luxury goods, aviation, infrastructure, tourism, entertainment, and hospitality.

Trump Mishandling and the U.S. Auto Industry

Despite Trump’s conviction that China’s loss is Americas gain, a hit to China is a hit to the U.S, and U.S. car sales have already been hit. Last year, General Motors and Ford sold more cars in China than in the U.S. This year, their Chinese factories were closed by the government and just recently began to reopen. But most will have to contend with a severe shortage of workers and disrupted supply chains.

Trump Mishandling: Political and Economic Fallout

Having failed the country by trump mishandling the crisis, Trump retreated to a familiar line of defense: blaming the “Fake News Media” and a Democratic “hoax.” He even preposterously attributed the 1,000-point drop in the Dow Jones on Feb. 26 to the Feb. 25 Democratic candidates’ debate.

So far Trump’s base and Congressional Republicans have stuck with him despite his incompetence, corruption, coddling dictators, and hijacking U.S. policy for his own gain. But that was when the market and the economy still looked good and the lives of American civilians weren’t threatened. Now the question is, will voters and Republicans in Congress hold him accountable for a serious economic and public health crisis he could have contained?

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He ignored two years of warnings that America was not equipped to handle a pandemic, that his approach would lead to the loss of lives, and that his ongoing cuts to our defenses would make America vulnerable to the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic.”  Now the pandemic has hit, and we’ve never been less prepared, thanks to Trump’s actions and inactions.

In 2018, he fired Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert, who had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics. A month later, Trump’s National Security Council advisor John Bolton disbanded the entire team of Timothy Ziemer, Trump’s senior director for global health, and never replaced it. Dr. Luciana Borio, the NSC’s director for medical and biodefense preparedness, left in May 2018 and was also not replaced.

The administration’s pandemic response chain of command is in disarray. Trump agency heads and advisers clash over who’s in charge. State leaders bemoan the lack of a clear leader.

In November 2019, a blue-ribbon bi-partisan commission warned “the American people are far from safe,” and urged  Trump to reestablish strong leadership on health at the NSC and invest more in biodefense. “The U.S. must either pay now [or pay] much greater…human and economic costs” when a pandemic hits,” it argued.

Instead, Trump proposed defunding the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) efforts to help other countries combat epidemics and prevent infectious diseases from invading America.  He also proposed to cut discretionary funding for the CDC.

Trump’s 2020 budget slashed the CDC 10%, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 12% —  “devastating” cuts at a time when state and local health departments have 50,000 fewer workers than they did in 2008. Also cut was a $30 million emergency response fund created under Obama to deploy experts in the event of a crisis.

As a result, not only has there been a shortage of corona test kits, but the kits sent to labs weren’t usable for weeks. 300 million respirator masks are needed by healthcare workers; the government had only 12 million, many of which had expired.

On March 2, the 472 tests that had been posted to the CDC’s website were removed because U.S. number pales in comparison to South Korea (109,591 tests), the UK (13,525), Italy (23,345) and others.  Even Turkey tested twice as many people as we did (940).

On March 5, Trump finally signed an $8.3 billion bill to fight coronavirus (which he might not have needed to do if he hadn’t decimated funding for the CDC, HHS and others). But it was too late to instill calm, particularly in the markets. In the two days following the law’s announcement, the Dow Jones plummeted 1224 points. At present writing, it’s more than 5000 points off its pre-corona high (29,551 on February 12).

It’s the president’s job to calm the country in a crisis. But it’s hard to believe a president who has told more than 16,000 lies and counting, who repeatedly contradicts his public health experts, and who blames everything on his critics.

Trump told us  “the risk to the American people remains very low.”  The World Health Organization told us that the outbreak presents the “highest level” of risk for the world.”

Trump said the mortality rate from coronavirus was 2% and the number of cases in the U.S would “within a couple of days [be] close to zero.”  But U.S. cases are proliferating, and health experts warn the virus will continue to spread. The World Health Organization says the mortality rate among documented cases so far is 3.4%, and actual mortality could be higher, depending on the quality of the local healthcare system.

Trump calls 3.4% mortality a “false number.” But it’s his numbers that are misleading.  He cited the March 6 tally of coronavirus in the U.S. — 225 cases and 14 deaths — and high recovery rates, as evidence health risks are low. But we missed the bulk of U.S. cases due to problems with testing protocols.  At present writing, in the U.S. there are actually 1,016 cases, 31 deaths, and 15 recoveries we know of.  That’s a 3% mortality rate, and both the incidence and the mortality rate are trending up.

Trump claimed that his administration was very close to a vaccine. His acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf promised it would be ready within “several months.” The WHO begged to differ, saying a vaccine would take “at least a year to a year and a half at best.”

Trump said the vaccine would be affordable for those who need it. On the same day, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar  told Congress, “we can’t control that price.” Azar ought to know; he was head of operations for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. His concern may be more about Big Pharma profitability than containing the virus.

Trump’s supporters and Republicans in Congress have tolerated Trump’s incompetence, corruption, tailoring foreign policy for his own financial gain and coddling Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. None of those things made much of a dent in Trump’s core support.

But this is different. Trump’s actions are costing American lives, and that may cost him some support.  He once boasted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”  It seems that theory is about to be tested.

Neil Baron is an attorney who has represented many institutions involved in the international markets and advised various parts of the federal government on economic issues. 

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