The art of the deal

There is a sad, almost poignant thing that happens when you present a series of actual facts and realities to the die-hard MAGA-forever Trump supporter. For those strong enough to accept the actual facts and realities, instead of merely waving them away with their magical hand while pronouncing them “fake news!,” there’s a fallback position many of them cling to. Okay, okay, they say: Yes, he lies all the time. Alright, so maybe he’s not that bright. And, yeah, I’m pretty sure he’s been up to some funny business with Russia. But dang it— look at the stock market! You can’t argue with that!

We used to hear a lot from the President of the United States about how great the stock market was performing, but not lately. Recent massive drops in the market have wiped away all of the gains of the year. When the market was up, the President was boasting, on Twitter and in front of cameras, about how “because of Trump,” everyone’s 401K was up and the stock marking was singing a beautiful song. Of the recent series of crashes, the President has said this: Nothing. Zero.

Last July, the President spoke at a big political rally in Lordstown, Ohio, telling the assembled throng that the factory jobs in the town “are all coming back.” Soon, he said, the town would “fill up those factories or rip them down and build new ones.” (As a candidate on the campaign trail, Trump was even more confident: “If I’m elected, you won’t lose one plant— you’ll have plants coming into this country, you’re going to have jobs again, you won’t lose one plant. I promise you. I promise you.”)

A few days ago, Ford – which operated the massive factory in Lordstown – announced that, despite Trump’s $1.5 billion corporate tax cut, they’re closing down the plant as part of an overall 15 percent cut in their North American workforce. The President’s steel and aluminum tariffs have cost Ford more than $1 billion in the last year. GM followed suit a day or so later, announcing the closure of five plants in Ohio, Maryland and Michigan. The President’s response: He tweeted out, angrily, “The U.S. saved General Motors and this is the THANKS we get!” He then threatened to cut “all GM subsidies.” One problem with that: GM doesn’t receive any subsidies. In any case, the damage was done and the GM stock plunged.

Remember when the President hosted the corporate leaders of Harley-Davidson at the White House last year? It was a great photo op. But Harley-Davidson used their extra tax-cut money to buy back company stock instead of hire more workers.

Harley-Davidson is now closing down their plant in Kansas City and moving some of their production overseas. The President’s reaction? A string of angry early-morning tweets threatening that “they will be taxed like never before!”

Much closer to home, farm bankruptcies are double now what they were just a couple years ago— mainly due to the President’s trade wars with China and a few other countries, which have decimated the market for many crops, particularly soybeans. Nor do we seem to have seen the worst of it yet. According to a recent story in the “Star Tribune,” “Current price levels and the trajectory of the current trends suggest that this trend has not yet seen a peak,” Ron Wirtz, an analyst at the Minneapolis Fed, wrote.

Let’s remember why so many people voted for Donald Trump. “Deals are my art form,” he’s fond of saying. “I make the best deals.” Fast forward a year or so, and he’s launched the country into a series of trade wars with other countries— and, in the case of the threats to Ford and Harley-Davidson, apparently a new, innovative kind of trade war: A war on American companies, with the first threatened attack coming from the federal government.

Then again, maybe everything’s going to work out just great. North Dakota’s new Senator-Elect, Kevin Cramer, told the Associated Press recently, regarding the catastrophic trade war that’s wreaking havoc on the state’s farm economy, “This is a priority for me.” Whew! Okay. That’s good to hear. The President, Cramer went on to say, told him personally that he’d – wait for it – make a great deal. What kind of deal? What would the deal involve? How would he get the deal through Congress? How soon could such a deal get approved— and how soon after that could it be implemented? And how would such a deal actually happen, given that Trump blew up the previous deal in order to launch an international trade war? Cramer wasn’t privy to such details. In fact, this is the sum total of what the President told Cramer: “If you want me to push this through fast I will get a good deal for farmers,” Trump said, “but if you give me some time I will get a great deal.”

How about, instead, listening to someone who actually seems to know what he’s talking about: Mark Watne, the president of the 45,000-strong North Dakota Farmers Union, told the “Star Tribune” that it may be too late for the state to recapture markets. “Because of this trade war, we’ve become an unreliable trade partner,” Watne said. “(China) may come back and buy some from us, but it likely would be less. We have expedited their decision to produce their own supplies.”

You know what that sounds like to me? A bad deal.

Corey Seymour is a proud NRHS graduate who went on to study political science, economics and literature at UND and Georgetown University. A former writer and editor on the National Affairs Desk at “Rolling Stone” and at many other magazines, he now works as a senior editor at “Vogue” in New York. Write him at [email protected].